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The global mental health crisis is a pressing concern, with college students particularly vulnerable to rising mental health disorders. The widespread use of smartphones among young adults, while offering numerous benefits, has also been…
Pragmatic trials increasingly define outcomes using real-world data such as electronic health records, where assessments are collected during routine care rather than at fixed timepoints. Consequently, these uncontrolled assessments may be…
The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) introduces in-situ sampling of human behaviour, and provides researchers and behavioural therapists with ecologically valid and timely assessments of a person's psychological state. This, in turn, opens…
Mediation analysis breaks down the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome into an indirect effect, acting through a third group of variables called mediators, and a direct effect, operating through other mechanisms. Mediation analysis…
In the statistical literature, a number of methods have been proposed to ensure valid inference about marginal effects of variables on a longitudinal outcome in settings with irregular monitoring times. However, the potential biases due to…
Conversational moderation of online communities is crucial to maintaining civility for a constructive environment, but it is challenging to scale and harmful to moderators. The inclusion of sophisticated natural language generation modules…
With today's technological advancements, mobile phones and wearable devices have become extensions of an increasingly diffused and smart digital infrastructure. In this paper, we examine mobile health (mHealth) platforms and their health…
Causal mediation analysis has historically been limited in two important ways: (i) a focus has traditionally been placed on binary treatments and static interventions, and (ii) direct and indirect effect decompositions have been pursued…
Research on mobile phone use often starts with a question of "How much time users spend on using their phones?". The question involves an equal-length measure that captures the duration of mobile phone use but does not tackle the other…
Electronic health records and other sources of observational data are increasingly used for drawing causal inferences. The estimation of a causal effect using these data not meant for research purposes is subject to confounding and…
Contextual bandits often provide simple and effective personalization in decision making problems, making them popular tools to deliver personalized interventions in mobile health as well as other health applications. However, when bandits…
The last two centuries saw groundbreaking advances in the field of healthcare: from the invention of the vaccine to organ transplant, and eradication of numerous deadly diseases. Yet, these breakthroughs have only illuminated the role that…
Estimating the causal effect of a time-varying public health intervention on the course of an infectious disease epidemic is an important methodological challenge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers attempted to estimate the effects…
Mobile health (mHealth) applications are a powerful medium for providing behavioral interventions, and systematic reviews suggest that theory-based interventions are more effective. However, how exactly theoretical concepts should be…
As smartphones become ever more integrated in peoples lives, a burgeoning new area of research has emerged on their well-being effects. We propose that disparate strands of research and apparently contradictory findings can be integrated…
Many people struggling with mental health issues are unable to access adequate care due to high costs and a shortage of mental health professionals, leading to a global mental health crisis. Online mental health communities can help…
Accurate estimation of treatment effects is essential for decision-making across various scientific fields. This task, however, becomes challenging in areas like social sciences and online marketplaces, where treating one experimental unit…
Conditioning on variables affected by treatment can induce post-treatment bias when estimating causal effects. Although this suggests that researchers should measure potential moderators before administering the treatment in an experiment,…
Activity and motion analysis has the potential to be used as a diagnostic tool for mental disorders. However, to-date, little work has been performed in turning stratification measures of activity into useful symptom markers. The research…
Obesity is a critical healthcare issue affecting the United States. The least risky treatments available for obesity are behavioral interventions meant to promote diet and exercise. Often these interventions contain a mobile component that…