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Related papers: Proximal mediation analysis

200 papers

Unobserved confounding is one of the main challenges when estimating causal effects. We propose a causal reduction method that, given a causal model, replaces an arbitrary number of possibly high-dimensional latent confounders with a single…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-24 Maximilian Ilse , Patrick Forré , Max Welling , Joris M. Mooij

Detecting and measuring confounding effects from data is a key challenge in causal inference. Existing methods frequently assume causal sufficiency, disregarding the presence of unobserved confounding variables. Causal sufficiency is both…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-09-27 Abbavaram Gowtham Reddy , Vineeth N Balasubramanian

One obstacle to ``elevating" correlation to causation is the phenomenon of confounding, i.e., when a correlation between two variables exists because both variables are in fact caused by a third variable. The situation where the confounders…

Applications · Statistics 2025-06-24 Caren Marzban , Yikun Zhang , Nicholas Bond , Michael Richman

Causal mediation analysis can improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying epidemiologic associations. However, the utility of natural direct and indirect effect estimation has been limited by the assumption of no confounder of the…

Applications · Statistics 2020-06-16 Kara E. Rudolph , Oleg Sofrygin , Wenjing Zheng , Mark J. van der Laan

Mediation analysis is widely used for exploring treatment mechanisms; however, it faces challenges when nonignorable missing confounders are present. Efficient inference of mediation effects and the efficiency loss due to nonignorable…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-22 Jiawei Shan , Wei Li , Chunrong Ai

Unmeasured confounding presents a common challenge in observational studies, potentially making standard causal parameters unidentifiable without additional assumptions. Given the increasing availability of diverse data sources, exploiting…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-18 Shanshan Luo , Yechi Zhang , Wei Li

Mediation analysis is appealing for its ability to improve understanding of the mechanistic drivers of causal effects, but real-world data complexities challenge its successful implementation, including: 1) the existence of post-exposure…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-12-19 Kara E Rudolph , Nicholas Williams , Ivan Diaz

Mediation analysis is a strategy for understanding the mechanisms by which treatments or interventions affect later outcomes. Mediation analysis is frequently applied in randomized trial settings, but typically assumes: a) that randomized…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-12-30 Kara E. Rudolph , Nicholas Williams , Ivan Diaz

With reference to a binary outcome and a binary mediator, we derive identification bounds for natural effects under a reduced set of assumptions. Specifically, no assumptions about confounding are made that involve the outcome; we only…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-03 Marco Doretti , Elena Stanghellini

Causal effect estimation has been studied by many researchers when only observational data is available. Sound and complete algorithms have been developed for pointwise estimation of identifiable causal queries. For non-identifiable causal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-26 Ziwei Jiang , Lai Wei , Murat Kocaoglu

Natural direct and indirect effects are mediational estimands that decompose the average treatment effect and describe how outcomes would be affected by contrasting levels of a treatment through changes induced in mediator values (in the…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-05-10 Kara E. Rudolph , Ivan Diaz

The same intervention can produce different effects in different sites. Transport mediation estimators can estimate the extent to which such differences can be explained by differences in compositional factors and the mechanisms by which…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-06-16 Kara E. Rudolph , Ivan Diaz

Skepticism about the assumption of no unmeasured confounding, also known as exchangeability, is often warranted in making causal inferences from observational data; because exchangeability hinges on an investigator's ability to accurately…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-22 Yifan Cui , Hongming Pu , Xu Shi , Wang Miao , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

Causal graphs may inform covariate adjustment for estimating causal effects and improve estimation efficiency by exploiting the graphical structure. In many applications, however, the target causal parameter may not be point-identified due…

Scientists regularly pose questions about treatment effects on outcomes conditional on a post-treatment event. However, causal inference in such settings requires care, even in perfectly executed randomized experiments. Recently, the…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-19 Chan Park , Mats Stensrud , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

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…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-26 Cheng Zheng , David C. Atkins , Melissa A. Lewis , Xiao-Hua Zhou

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…

Unmeasured confounding presents a significant challenge in causal inference from observational studies. Classical approaches often rely on collecting proxy variables, such as instrumental variables. However, in applications where the…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-01-16 Xiaochuan Shi , Dehan Kong , Linbo Wang

Observational studies are the primary source of data for causal inference, but it is challenging when existing unmeasured confounding. Missing data problems are also common in observational studies. How to obtain the causal effects from the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-05-15 Renzhong Zheng

Proxy variables are commonly used in causal inference when unmeasured confounding exists. While most existing proximal methods assume a unidirectional causal relationship between two primary variables, many social and biological systems…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-21 Jiaqi Min , Xueyue Zhang , Shanshan Luo