Lopez Michael J, Gutman Roee
1 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA.
2 Department of Biostatistics, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Stat Methods Med Res. 2017 Apr;26(2):839-864. doi: 10.1177/0962280214560046. Epub 2014 Nov 28.
Propensity score methods are common for estimating a binary treatment effect when treatment assignment is not randomized. When exposure is measured on an ordinal scale (i.e. low-medium-high), however, propensity score inference requires extensions which have received limited attention. Estimands of possible interest with an ordinal exposure are the average treatment effects between each pair of exposure levels. Using these estimands, it is possible to determine an optimal exposure level. Traditional methods, including dichotomization of the exposure or a series of binary propensity score comparisons across exposure pairs, are generally inadequate for identification of optimal levels. We combine subclassification with regression adjustment to estimate transitive, unbiased average causal effects across an ordered exposure, and apply our method on the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to estimate the effects of nutritional label use on body mass index.
当治疗分配并非随机进行时,倾向得分方法常用于估计二元治疗效果。然而,当暴露是以有序尺度(即低-中-高)来衡量时,倾向得分推断需要扩展,而这方面受到的关注有限。对于有序暴露,可能感兴趣的估计量是每对暴露水平之间的平均治疗效果。利用这些估计量,可以确定最佳暴露水平。传统方法,包括对暴露进行二分法或对暴露对进行一系列二元倾向得分比较,通常不足以确定最佳水平。我们将亚分类与回归调整相结合,以估计有序暴露中的可传递、无偏平均因果效应,并将我们的方法应用于2005 - 2006年国家健康和营养检查调查,以估计营养标签使用对体重指数的影响。