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Bridging the gap between internal and external validity is crucial for heterogeneous treatment effect estimation. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), favoured for their internal validity due to randomisation, often encounter challenges in…

Social media is nearly ubiquitous in modern life, raising concerns about its societal impacts -- from mental health and polarization to violence and democratic disruption. Yet research on its causal effects is still inconclusive: Various…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Joseph B. Bak-Coleman , Stephan Lewandowsky , Philipp Lorenz-Spreen , Arvind Narayanan , Amy Orben , Lisa Oswald

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) face inherent limitations, such as ethical or resource constraints, which lead to a limited number of study participants. To address these limitations, recent research endeavors have sought to incorporate…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-02-20 Peijin Wang , Hwanhee Hong , Kyungeun Jeon , Laine Elliott Thomas

Cluster-randomized trials (CRTs) are widely used to evaluate group-level interventions and increasingly collect multiple outcomes capturing complementary dimensions of benefit and risk. Investigators often seek a single global summary of…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-22 Xinyuan Chen , Fan Li

Causal inference is vital for informed decision-making across fields such as biomedical research and social sciences. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard for internal validity of inferences, whereas…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-02 Ruoqi Yu , Bikram Karmakar , Jessica Vandeleest , Eleanor Bimla Schwarz

Randomized experiments have become a cornerstone of evidence-based decision-making in contexts ranging from online platforms to public health. However, in experimental settings with network interference, a unit's treatment can influence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Sadegh Shirani , Yuwei Luo , William Overman , Ruoxuan Xiong , Mohsen Bayati

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) represent the paramount evidence of clinical medicine. Using machines to interpret the massive amount of RCTs has the potential of aiding clinical decision-making. We propose a RCT conclusion generation…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2019-10-04 Alexander Te-Wei Shieh , Yung-Sung Chuang , Shang-Yu Su , Yun-Nung Chen

We develop new methods to integrate experimental and observational data in causal inference. While randomized controlled trials offer strong internal validity, they are often costly and therefore limited in sample size. Observational data,…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-11-04 Xuelin Yang , Licong Lin , Susan Athey , Michael I. Jordan , Guido W. Imbens

In this paper we present tools for applied researchers that re-purpose off-the-shelf methods from the computer-science field of machine learning to create a "discovery engine" for data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The applied…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-13 Jens Ludwig , Sendhil Mullainathan , Jann Spiess

We focus on the problem of generalizing a causal effect estimated on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to a target population described by a set of covariates from observational data. Available methods such as inverse propensity sampling…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-27 Imke Mayer , Julie Josse , Traumabase Group

The NLP community typically relies on performance of a model on a held-out test set to assess generalization. Performance drops observed in datasets outside of official test sets are generally attributed to "out-of-distribution" effects.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-04-03 Aparna Elangovan , Jiayuan He , Yuan Li , Karin Verspoor

Online experiments such as Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) or A/B-tests are the bread and butter of modern platforms on the web. They are conducted continuously to allow platforms to estimate the causal effect of replacing system…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-24 Olivier Jeunen

In randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that focus on time-to-event outcomes, intercurrent events can arise in two ways: as semi-competing events, which modify the hazard of the primary outcome events, or as competing events, which make the…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-26 Yuhao Deng , Shasha Han , Xiao-Hua Zhou

Recent work has made important contributions in the development of causally-interpretable meta-analysis. These methods transport treatment effects estimated in a collection of randomized trials to a target population of interest. Ideally,…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-08 Justin M. Clark , Kollin W. Rott , James S. Hodges , Jared D. Huling

As clinical decision-making increasingly moves toward individualized and context-specific treatment recommendations, reliance on any single evidence source, randomized or observational, may be insufficient. Principled integration of…

Real world observational data, together with causal inference, allow the estimation of causal effects when randomized controlled trials are not available. To be accepted into practice, such predictive models must be validated for the…

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are ideal for estimating causal effects, because the distributions of background covariates are similar in expectation across treatment groups. When estimating causal effects using observational data,…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-02-27 Anthony D. Scotina , Roee Gutman

Trial engagement effects are effects of trial participation on the outcome that are not mediated by treatment assignment. Most work on extending (generalizing or transporting) causal inferences from a randomized trial to a target population…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-23 Lawson Ung , Tyler J. VanderWeele , Issa J. Dahabreh

Disruptions in clinical trials may be due to external events like pandemics, warfare, and natural disasters. Resulting complications may lead to unforeseen intercurrent events (events that occur after treatment initiation and affect the…

Applications · Statistics 2024-08-20 Rachael V. Phillips , Mark J. van der Laan

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) yield internally valid causal effect estimates, but generalizing these results to target populations with different characteristics requires an untestable selection ignorability assumption: conditional on…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-31 Amir Asiaee , Samhita Pal , Jared D. Huling