190,800 research outputs found
On the identification of a class of linear models
This paper deals with the problem of identifying direct causal effects in recursive linear structural equation models. The paper provides a procedure for solving the identification problem in a special class of models
Psychosocial factors and their role in chronic pain: A brief review of development and current status
The belief that pain is a direct result of tissue damage has dominated medical thinking since the mid 20(th )Century. Several schools of psychological thought proffered linear causal models to explain non-physical pain observations such as phantom limb pain and the effects of placebo interventions. Psychological research has focused on identifying those people with acute pain who are at risk of transitioning into chronic and disabling pain, in the hope of producing better outcomes. Several multicausal Cognitive Behavioural models dominate the research landscape in this area. They are gaining wider acceptance and some aspects are being integrated and implemented into a number of health care systems. The most notable of these is the concept of Yellow Flags. The research to validate the veracity of such programs has not yet been established. In this paper I seek to briefly summarize the development of psychological thought, both past and present, then review current cognitive-behavioural models and the available supporting evidence. I conclude by discussing these factors and identifying those that have been shown to be reliable predictors of chronicity and those that may hold promise for the future
Identification, Inference and Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Mediation Effects
Causal mediation analysis is routinely conducted by applied researchers in a
variety of disciplines. The goal of such an analysis is to investigate
alternative causal mechanisms by examining the roles of intermediate variables
that lie in the causal paths between the treatment and outcome variables. In
this paper we first prove that under a particular version of sequential
ignorability assumption, the average causal mediation effect (ACME) is
nonparametrically identified. We compare our identification assumption with
those proposed in the literature. Some practical implications of our
identification result are also discussed. In particular, the popular estimator
based on the linear structural equation model (LSEM) can be interpreted as an
ACME estimator once additional parametric assumptions are made. We show that
these assumptions can easily be relaxed within and outside of the LSEM
framework and propose simple nonparametric estimation strategies. Second, and
perhaps most importantly, we propose a new sensitivity analysis that can be
easily implemented by applied researchers within the LSEM framework. Like the
existing identifying assumptions, the proposed sequential ignorability
assumption may be too strong in many applied settings. Thus, sensitivity
analysis is essential in order to examine the robustness of empirical findings
to the possible existence of an unmeasured confounder. Finally, we apply the
proposed methods to a randomized experiment from political psychology. We also
make easy-to-use software available to implement the proposed methods.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-STS321 the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
On Partial Identification of the Pure Direct Effect
In causal mediation analysis, nonparametric identification of the pure
(natural) direct effect typically relies on, in addition to no unobserved
pre-exposure confounding, fundamental assumptions of (i) so-called
"cross-world-counterfactuals" independence and (ii) no exposure- induced
confounding. When the mediator is binary, bounds for partial identification
have been given when neither assumption is made, or alternatively when assuming
only (ii). We extend existing bounds to the case of a polytomous mediator, and
provide bounds for the case assuming only (i). We apply these bounds to data
from the Harvard PEPFAR program in Nigeria, where we evaluate the extent to
which the effects of antiretroviral therapy on virological failure are mediated
by a patient's adherence, and show that inference on this effect is somewhat
sensitive to model assumptions.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figure
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