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Related papers: Sensitivity Analysis Without Assumptions

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A fundamental challenge in observational causal inference is that assumptions about unconfoundedness are not testable from data. Assessing sensitivity to such assumptions is therefore important in practice. Unfortunately, some existing…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-01-15 Alexander Franks , Alexander D'Amour , Avi Feller

Causal inference with observational data can be performed under an assumption of no unobserved confounders (unconfoundedness assumption). There is, however, seldom clear subject-matter or empirical evidence for such an assumption. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-11-13 Minna Genbäck , Xavier de Luna

We propose a novel method for sensitivity analysis to unobserved confounding in causal inference. The method builds on a copula-based causal graphical normalizing flow that we term $\rho$-GNF, where $\rho \in [-1,+1]$ is the sensitivity…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-13 Sourabh Balgi , Marc Braun , Jose M. Peña , Adel Daoud

While observational data are routinely used to estimate causal effects of biomedical treatments, doing so requires special methods to adjust for observed confounding. These methods invariably rely on untestable statistical and causal…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-02 Arman Oganisian

Sensitivity to unmeasured confounding is not typically a primary consideration in designing treated-control comparisons in observational studies. We introduce a framework allowing researchers to optimize robustness to omitted variable bias…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-19 Melody Huang , Dan Soriano , Samuel D. Pimentel

A major challenge in estimating treatment effects in observational studies is the reliance on untestable conditions such as the assumption of no unmeasured confounding. In this work, we propose an algorithm that can falsify the assumption…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-06-03 Rickard K. A. Karlsson , Jesse H. Krijthe

Causal inference, especially in observational studies, relies on untestable assumptions about the true data-generating process. Sensitivity analysis helps us determine how robust our conclusions are when we alter these underlying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Nikita Dhawan , Daniel Shen , Leonardo Cotta , Chris J. Maddison

We consider the problem of constructing bounds on the average treatment effect (ATE) when unmeasured confounders exist but have bounded influence. Specifically, we assume that omitted confounders could not change the odds of treatment for…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-07-25 Jacob Dorn , Kevin Guo , Nathan Kallus

Inferring causal effects of continuous-valued treatments from observational data is a crucial task promising to better inform policy- and decision-makers. A critical assumption needed to identify these effects is that all confounding…

We provide an approach to exploratory data analysis in matched observational studies with a single intervention and multiple endpoints. In such settings, the researcher would like to explore evidence for actual treatment effects among these…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-10 Mengqi Lin , Colin Fogarty

A key objective of decomposition analysis is to identify a factor (the 'mediator') contributing to disparities in an outcome between social groups. In decomposition analysis, a scholarly interest often centers on estimating how much the…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-05-27 Soojin Park , Suyeon Kang , Chioun Lee , Shujie Ma

We introduce several methods for assessing sensitivity to unmeasured confounding in marginal structural models; importantly we allow treatments to be discrete or continuous, static or time-varying. We consider three sensitivity models: a…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-10-12 Matteo Bonvini , Edward Kennedy , Valerie Ventura , Larry Wasserman

Matching is one of the most widely used study designs for adjusting for measured confounders in observational studies. However, unmeasured confounding may exist and cannot be removed by matching. Therefore, a sensitivity analysis is…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-17 Jeffrey Zhang , Dylan Small , Siyu Heng

Many scientific questions in biomedical, environmental, and psychological research involve understanding the effects of multiple factors on outcomes. While factorial experiments are ideal for this purpose, randomized controlled treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-03 Ruoqi Yu , Peng Ding

In observational studies, the observed association between an exposure and outcome of interest may be distorted by unobserved confounding. Causal sensitivity analysis can be used to assess the robustness of observed associations to…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-11-04 Rui Hu , Ted Westling

Fairness for machine learning predictions is widely required in practice for legal, ethical, and societal reasons. Existing work typically focuses on settings without unobserved confounding, even though unobserved confounding can lead to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Maresa Schröder , Dennis Frauen , Stefan Feuerriegel

Assessing sensitivity to unmeasured confounding is an important step in observational studies, which typically estimate effects under the assumption that all confounders are measured. In this paper, we develop a sensitivity analysis…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-04 Dan Soriano , Eli Ben-Michael , Peter J. Bickel , Avi Feller , Samuel D. Pimentel

Unobserved confounding is a central barrier to drawing causal inferences from observational data. Several authors have recently proposed that this barrier can be overcome in the case where one attempts to infer the effects of several…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-03-20 Alexander D'Amour

This paper introduces the $f$-sensitivity model, a new sensitivity model that characterizes the violation of unconfoundedness in causal inference. It assumes the selection bias due to unmeasured confounding is bounded "on average"; compared…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-07 Ying Jin , Zhimei Ren , Zhengyuan Zhou

Various methods have recently been proposed to estimate causal effects with confidence intervals that are uniformly valid over a set of data generating processes when high-dimensional nuisance models are estimated by post-model-selection or…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-07 Niloofar Moosavi , Tetiana Gorbach , Xavier de Luna