Download or read book Causal Inference with Non standard Experimental Designs written by Han Wu (Researcher in causal inference) and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past decades have seen a comprehensive body of research dedicated to causal inference in conventional experimental designs. However, as technological innovations continue to foster a rapid influx of data across numerous fields, the datasets derived often exhibit new structures that stem from unconventional designs. The thesis at hand is centered around the development of methods for conducting causal inference, particularly when the design deviates from the standard, thereby making conventional methods inapplicable. Chapter 2 delves into the regression discontinuity design in cases where the running variable is a noisy measurement of a latent variable. We propose a novel design-based approach for estimation and inference. This approach proves effective when applied to a broad array of widely-used estimands. Chapter 3 explores adaptive experimentation in the context of delayed feedback. In subchapter 3.1, we extend Thompson sampling to the proportional hazard model and develop a method capable of overcoming challenges associated with vaccine trials. Subsequently, in subchapter 3.2, we study the behavior of Thompson sampling when delays are unrestricted, providing theoretical regret bounds and conducting extensive experiments. Chapter 4 investigates policy learning in scenarios involving multiple treatments or multiple outcomes. In subchapter 4.1, we propose methods for evaluating policies when cost constraints accompany multiple treatments. In subchapter 4.2, we introduce a personalized experimentation system that can learn interpretable policies from experimental data and is scalable for big datasets.

Download or read book Experiments in Public Management Research written by Oliver James and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of experimental research and methods in public management, and their impact on theory, research practices and substantive knowledge.

Download or read book Best Practices in Quantitative Methods written by Jason W. Osborne and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to Best Practices in Quantitative Methods envision quantitative methods in the 21st century, identify the best practices, and, where possible, demonstrate the superiority of their recommendations empirically. Editor Jason W. Osborne designed this book with the goal of providing readers with the most effective, evidence-based, modern quantitative methods and quantitative data analysis across the social and behavioral sciences. The text is divided into five main sections covering select best practices in Measurement, Research Design, Basics of Data Analysis, Quantitative Methods, and Advanced Quantitative Methods. Each chapter contains a current and expansive review of the literature, a case for best practices in terms of method, outcomes, inferences, etc., and broad-ranging examples along with any empirical evidence to show why certain techniques are better. Key Features: Describes important implicit knowledge to readers: The chapters in this volume explain the important details of seemingly mundane aspects of quantitative research, making them accessible to readers and demonstrating why it is important to pay attention to these details. Compares and contrasts analytic techniques: The book examines instances where there are multiple options for doing things, and make recommendations as to what is the "best" choice—or choices, as what is best often depends on the circumstances. Offers new procedures to update and explicate traditional techniques: The featured scholars present and explain new options for data analysis, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the new procedures in depth, describing how to perform them, and demonstrating their use. Intended Audience: Representing the vanguard of research methods for the 21st century, this book is an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers who want a comprehensive, authoritative resource for practical and sound advice from leading experts in quantitative methods.

Download or read book Experimental and Quasi experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference written by William R. Shadish and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 2002 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sections include: experiments and generalised causal inference; statistical conclusion validity and internal validity; construct validity and external validity; quasi-experimental designs that either lack a control group or lack pretest observations on the outcome; quasi-experimental designs that use both control groups and pretests; quasi-experiments: interrupted time-series designs; regresssion discontinuity designs; randomised experiments: rationale, designs, and conditions conducive to doing them; practical problems 1: ethics, participation recruitment and random assignment; practical problems 2: treatment implementation and attrition; generalised causal inference: a grounded theory; generalised causal inference: methods for single studies; generalised causal inference: methods for multiple studies; a critical assessment of our assumptions.

Download or read book Causal Models in Experimental Designs written by Hubert M. Blalock and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2017 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a companion volume to the Causal Models in the Social Sciences, the majority of articles concern panel designs involving repeated measurements while a smaller cluster involves discussions of how experimental designs may be improved by more explicit attention to causal models. All of the papers are concerned with complications that may occur in actual research designs--as compared with idealized ones that often become the basis of textbook discussions of design issues. In thinking about the revision of that volume, considerable literature has accumulated. As a result, this volume attempts to bridge the gap in time and substance to that earlier effort. Blalock examined articles that seemed to hold the most promise of expanding the variety of topics in research methods to the causal modeling approach, and addressing the design issues involved. The majority of these fell under the heading of panel designs involving repeated measurements; a smaller cluster involved discussions of how our understanding of experimental designs could be improved by paying explicit attention to causal models. Blalock presented five chapters bearing on experimental designs into Part I, since the issues with which they deal are more general than those that treat more specifically with the handling of change data. Although many readers may have more immediate interest in these latter papers, which appear in Part II, Blalock thought it wise to encourage such readers to examine broader issues before plunging specifically into discussions of panel designs. H.M. Blalock, Jr. (1926-1991) was professor of sociology at the University of Washington, Seattle. He was recipient of the 1973 ASA Samuel Stouffer Prize, and was a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was the 70th president of the American Sociological Association.

Download or read book Causal Analysis in Population Studies written by Henriette Engelhardt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central aim of many studies in population research and demography is to explain cause-effect relationships among variables or events. For decades, population scientists have concentrated their efforts on estimating the ‘causes of effects’ by applying standard cross-sectional and dynamic regression techniques, with regression coefficients routinely being understood as estimates of causal effects. The standard approach to infer the ‘effects of causes’ in natural sciences and in psychology is to conduct randomized experiments. In population studies, experimental designs are generally infeasible. In population studies, most research is based on non-experimental designs (observational or survey designs) and rarely on quasi experiments or natural experiments. Using non-experimental designs to infer causal relationships—i.e. relationships that can ultimately inform policies or interventions—is a complex undertaking. Specifically, treatment effects can be inferred from non-experimental data with a counterfactual approach. In this counterfactual perspective, causal effects are defined as the difference between the potential outcome irrespective of whether or not an individual had received a certain treatment (or experienced a certain cause). The counterfactual approach to estimate effects of causes from quasi-experimental data or from observational studies was first proposed by Rubin in 1974 and further developed by James Heckman and others. This book presents both theoretical contributions and empirical applications of the counterfactual approach to causal inference.

Download or read book Estimating Causal Effects written by Barbara Schneider and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the value of quasi-experimental techniques that can be used to approximate randomized experiments. The goal is to describe the logic of causal inference for researchers and policymakers who are not necessarily trained in experimental and quasi-experimental designs and statistical techniques.

Download or read book Using Propensity Scores in Quasi Experimental Designs written by William M. Holmes and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Propensity Scores in Quasi-Experimental Designs, by William M. Holmes, examines how propensity scores can be used to reduce bias with different kinds of quasi-experimental designs and to fix or improve broken experiments. Requiring minimal use of matrix and vector algebra, the book covers the causal assumptions of propensity score estimates and their many uses, linking these uses with analysis appropriate for different designs. Thorough coverage of bias assessment, propensity score estimation, and estimate improvement is provided, along with graphical and statistical methods for this process. Applications are included for analysis of variance and covariance, maximum likelihood and logistic regression, two-stage least squares, generalized linear regression, and general estimation equations. The examples use public data sets that have policy and programmatic relevance across a variety of disciplines.

Download or read book An Introduction to Causal Inference written by Judea Pearl and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper summarizes recent advances in causal inference and underscores the paradigmatic shifts that must be undertaken in moving from traditional statistical analysis to causal analysis of multivariate data. Special emphasis is placed on the assumptions that underly all causal inferences, the languages used in formulating those assumptions, the conditional nature of all causal and counterfactual claims, and the methods that have been developed for the assessment of such claims. These advances are illustrated using a general theory of causation based on the Structural Causal Model (SCM) described in Pearl (2000a), which subsumes and unifies other approaches to causation, and provides a coherent mathematical foundation for the analysis of causes and counterfactuals. In particular, the paper surveys the development of mathematical tools for inferring (from a combination of data and assumptions) answers to three types of causal queries: (1) queries about the effects of potential interventions, (also called "causal effects" or "policy evaluation") (2) queries about probabilities of counterfactuals, (including assessment of "regret," "attribution" or "causes of effects") and (3) queries about direct and indirect effects (also known as "mediation"). Finally, the paper defines the formal and conceptual relationships between the structural and potential-outcome frameworks and presents tools for a symbiotic analysis that uses the strong features of both. The tools are demonstrated in the analyses of mediation, causes of effects, and probabilities of causation. -- p. 1.

Download or read book Essays in Causal Inference and Experimental Design written by Orville Mondal and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is comprised of two chapters the first of which is concerned with how to address a prevalent issue when analyzing data from randomized experiment with human participants, and the second of which investigates aspects of experimental design. In Chapter 1 I study the problem of identifying the causal effect of an experimental treatment when the experiment suffers from non-compliance. In particular, I consider the identifying power of information collected from non-complying participants after the completion of the treatment phase. Follow up surveys often ask study participants why they chose not to accept an offer of treatment despite being assigned to it, and answers to such questions offer insights into the decision process by which agents choose to comply with their assigned treatment status. I propose a model that rationalizes an agent's compliance decision. Based on this model, I characterize the set of values for the average treatment effect that are conformable with data observed in a randomized trial. This model and the implied set of identified values for the average treatment effect rely on the availability of follow up surveys that ask agents why they chose to not comply. This underscores the importance of following up with non-complying agents since the model often leads to substantially tighter identified sets for the average treatment effect than what is possible without this information. I apply the proposed model to data from the Job Training Partnership Act Study to estimate identified sets for the average treatment effect for a number of employment outcomes. Chapter 2 considers the problem of where to introduce a new policy. Field experiments can inform where to implement policies, but in practice there may be hundreds of candidate sites being considered and concerns about external validity. We develop a quasi-Bayesian approach to selecting a small number of sites in which to run new experiments to inform policy choices across a wide set of locations. The approach develops a prior specification for the joint distribution of site-level average treatment effects based on a microeconometric structural model, while also allowing for heterogeneity across sites that is not captured by the model. We apply the approach to choices over rolling out a mobile money innovation in 41 migration corridors in Bangladesh, 60 in Pakistan, and 740 in India. Learning is optimized when the experiments take place in locations informative for the largest number of sites where suitability of the policy is a priori uncertain. Learning and expected welfare improve relative to experimentation based on plausible rules of thumb.

Download or read book Causal Inference in Statistics written by Judea Pearl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-25 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CAUSAL INFERENCE IN STATISTICS A Primer Causality is central to the understanding and use of data. Without an understanding of cause–effect relationships, we cannot use data to answer questions as basic as "Does this treatment harm or help patients?" But though hundreds of introductory texts are available on statistical methods of data analysis, until now, no beginner-level book has been written about the exploding arsenal of methods that can tease causal information from data. Causal Inference in Statistics fills that gap. Using simple examples and plain language, the book lays out how to define causal parameters; the assumptions necessary to estimate causal parameters in a variety of situations; how to express those assumptions mathematically; whether those assumptions have testable implications; how to predict the effects of interventions; and how to reason counterfactually. These are the foundational tools that any student of statistics needs to acquire in order to use statistical methods to answer causal questions of interest. This book is accessible to anyone with an interest in interpreting data, from undergraduates, professors, researchers, or to the interested layperson. Examples are drawn from a wide variety of fields, including medicine, public policy, and law; a brief introduction to probability and statistics is provided for the uninitiated; and each chapter comes with study questions to reinforce the readers understanding.

Download or read book Experimental and Quasi Experimental Designs for Research written by Donald T. Campbell and published by Ravenio Books. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We shall examine the validity of 16 experimental designs against 12 common threats to valid inference. By experiment we refer to that portion of research in which variables are manipulated and their effects upon other variables observed. It is well to distinguish the particular role of this chapter. It is not a chapter on experimental design in the Fisher (1925, 1935) tradition, in which an experimenter having complete mastery can schedule treatments and measurements for optimal statistical efficiency, with complexity of design emerging only from that goal of efficiency. Insofar as the designs discussed in the present chapter become complex, it is because of the intransigency of the environment: because, that is, of the experimenter’s lack of complete control.

Download or read book Causality in a Social World written by Guanglei Hong and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causality in a Social World introduces innovative new statistical research and strategies for investigating moderated intervention effects, mediated intervention effects, and spill-over effects using experimental or quasi-experimental data. The book uses potential outcomes to define causal effects, explains and evaluates identification assumptions using application examples, and compares innovative statistical strategies with conventional analysis methods. Whilst highlighting the crucial role of good research design and the evaluation of assumptions required for identifying causal effects in the context of each application, the author demonstrates that improved statistical procedures will greatly enhance the empirical study of causal relationship theory. Applications focus on interventions designed to improve outcomes for participants who are embedded in social settings, including families, classrooms, schools, neighbourhoods, and workplaces.

Download or read book Causal Inference and the Comparative Interrupted Time Series Design written by Travis St. Clair and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researchers are increasingly using comparative interrupted time series (CITS) designs to estimate the effects of programs and policies when randomized controlled trials are not feasible. In a simple interrupted time series design, researchers compare the pre-treatment values of a treatment group time series to post-treatment values in order to assess the impact of a treatment, without any comparison group to account for confounding factors. The CITS design is a version of the ITS design in which both a treatment and a comparison group are evaluated both before and after the onset of a treatment. A growing body of literature is employing a within study comparison (WSC) methodology to examine the validity of the CITS model. WSC studies empirically estimate the extent to which a given observational study reproduces the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) when both share the same treatment group, and represent a rigorous method of evaluating non-experimental designs using real data. A number of recent within-study comparisons have demonstrated that CITS can produce estimates that are comparable to those from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in practice. In the St. Clair et al. (2014) application, the authors found that correspondence with the RCT was possible when the CITS model accounted for baseline trends, but that additional time points could actually increase bias when the pre-treatment trend was not modeled correctly. Examination of the pretreatment trends in this data set showed clearly that in at least one of the outcomes the treatment and comparison groups had different slopes in the pretreatment period, and as a result the "parallel trends" assumption often invoked in the difference-in-difference literature was clearly violated. This paper employs a within study comparison (WSC) methodology to examine the performance of two approaches: (1) a more flexible modeling approach, which employs year fixed-effects rather than trying to parametrically model the pretest trend; and (2) match treatment and comparison cases to reduce reliance on modeling the pretreatment trend. The paper then compares the approaches to the performance of the baseline mean and baseline slope models across three datasets. The purpose of this research is two-fold: (1) to examine what approach, if any, works in the unclear functional form case; and (2) to examine the relative superiority of the different approaches across the three datasets in terms of both bias reduction and precision. Tables and figures are appended.

Download or read book Causal Learning written by Alison Gopnik and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding causal structure is a central task of human cognition. Causal learning underpins the development of our concepts and categories, our intuitive theories, and our capacities for planning, imagination and inference. During the last few years, there has been an interdisciplinary revolution in our understanding of learning and reasoning: Researchers in philosophy, psychology, and computation have discovered new mechanisms for learning the causal structure of the world. This new work provides a rigorous, formal basis for theory theories of concepts and cognitive development, and moreover, the causal learning mechanisms it has uncovered go dramatically beyond the traditional mechanisms of both nativist theories, such as modularity theories, and empiricist ones, such as association or connectionism.

Download or read book Elements of Causal Inference written by Jonas Peters and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-11-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise and self-contained introduction to causal inference, increasingly important in data science and machine learning. The mathematization of causality is a relatively recent development, and has become increasingly important in data science and machine learning. This book offers a self-contained and concise introduction to causal models and how to learn them from data. After explaining the need for causal models and discussing some of the principles underlying causal inference, the book teaches readers how to use causal models: how to compute intervention distributions, how to infer causal models from observational and interventional data, and how causal ideas could be exploited for classical machine learning problems. All of these topics are discussed first in terms of two variables and then in the more general multivariate case. The bivariate case turns out to be a particularly hard problem for causal learning because there are no conditional independences as used by classical methods for solving multivariate cases. The authors consider analyzing statistical asymmetries between cause and effect to be highly instructive, and they report on their decade of intensive research into this problem. The book is accessible to readers with a background in machine learning or statistics, and can be used in graduate courses or as a reference for researchers. The text includes code snippets that can be copied and pasted, exercises, and an appendix with a summary of the most important technical concepts.

Download or read book Doing Data Science written by Cathy O'Neil and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now that people are aware that data can make the difference in an election or a business model, data science as an occupation is gaining ground. But how can you get started working in a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary field that’s so clouded in hype? This insightful book, based on Columbia University’s Introduction to Data Science class, tells you what you need to know. In many of these chapter-long lectures, data scientists from companies such as Google, Microsoft, and eBay share new algorithms, methods, and models by presenting case studies and the code they use. If you’re familiar with linear algebra, probability, and statistics, and have programming experience, this book is an ideal introduction to data science. Topics include: Statistical inference, exploratory data analysis, and the data science process Algorithms Spam filters, Naive Bayes, and data wrangling Logistic regression Financial modeling Recommendation engines and causality Data visualization Social networks and data journalism Data engineering, MapReduce, Pregel, and Hadoop Doing Data Science is collaboration between course instructor Rachel Schutt, Senior VP of Data Science at News Corp, and data science consultant Cathy O’Neil, a senior data scientist at Johnson Research Labs, who attended and blogged about the course.