Related papers: Exact parametric causal mediation analysis for a b…
Mediation analysis is widely used for investigating direct and indirect causal pathways through which an effect arises. However, many mediation analysis studies are challenged by missingness in the mediator and outcome. In general, when the…
With multiple potential mediators on the causal pathway from a treatment to an outcome, we consider the problem of decomposing the effects along multiple possible causal path(s) through each distinct mediator. Under Pearl's path-specific…
Mediation analysis in causal inference has traditionally focused on binary exposures and deterministic interventions, and a decomposition of the average treatment effect in terms of direct and indirect effects. In this paper we present an…
Causal mediation analysis aims at disentangling a treatment effect into an indirect mechanism operating through an intermediate outcome or mediator, as well as the direct effect of the treatment on the outcome of interest. However, the…
Given a binary treatment D and a binary mediator M, mediation analysis decomposes the total effect of D on an outcome Y into the direct and indirect effects. Typically, both D and M are assumed to be exogenous, but this paper allows M to be…
Causal mediation analysis provides techniques for defining and estimating effects that may be endowed with mechanistic interpretations. With many scientific investigations seeking to address mechanistic questions, causal direct and indirect…
It is often of interest to decompose a total effect of an exposure into the component that acts on the outcome through some mediator and the component that acts independently through other pathways. Said another way, we are interested in…
In randomized trials, once the total effect of the intervention has been estimated, it is often of interest to explore mechanistic effects through mediators along the causal pathway between the randomized treatment and the outcome. In the…
The decomposition of the overall effect of a treatment into direct and indirect effects is here investigated with reference to a recursive system of binary random variables. We show how, for the single mediator context, the marginal effect…
Mediation analysis aims at disentangling the effects of a treatment on an outcome through alternative causal mechanisms and has become a popular practice in biomedical and social science applications. The causal framework based on…
Path-specific effects are a broad class of mediated effects from an exposure to an outcome via one or more causal pathways with respect to some subset of intermediate variables. The majority of the literature concerning estimation of…
In cluster-randomized trials (CRTs), there is emerging interest in exploring the causal mechanism in which a cluster-level treatment affects the outcome through an intermediate outcome. The majority of existing causal mediation methods are…
Although the exposure can be randomly assigned in studies of mediation effects, any form of direct intervention on the mediator is often infeasible. As a result, unmeasured mediator-outcome confounding can seldom be ruled out. We propose…
We propose a definition for the average indirect effect of a binary treatment in the potential outcomes model for causal inference under cross-unit interference. Our definition is analogous to the standard definition of the average direct…
Natural direct and indirect effects decompose the effect of a treatment into the part that is mediated by a covariate (the mediator) and the part that is not. Their definitions rely on the concept of outcomes under treatment with the…
Decomposing an exposure effect on an outcome into separate natural indirect effects through multiple mediators requires strict assumptions, such as correctly postulating the causal structure of the mediators, and no unmeasured confounding…
This paper aims to provide practitioners of causal mediation analysis with a better understanding of estimation options. We take as inputs two familiar strategies (weighting and model-based prediction) and a simple way of combining them…
Given a binary treatment and a binary mediator, mediation analysis decomposes the total effect of the treatment on an outcome variable into direct and indirect effects. However, the existing decompositions are "path-dependent", and…
In mediation analysis, the effect of an exposure (or treatment) on an outcome variable is decomposed into two components: a direct effect, which pertains to an immediate influence of the exposure on the outcome, and an indirect effect,…
Causal mediation analysis is an important statistical method in social and medical studies, as it can provide insights about why an intervention works and inform the development of future interventions. Currently, most causal mediation…