A novel causal mediation analysis approach for zero-inflated mediators.

ABSTRACT: Mediation analyses play important roles in making causal inference in biomedical research to examine causal pathways that may be mediated by one or more intermediate variables (ie, mediators). Although mediation frameworks have been well established such as counterfactual-outcomes (ie, potential-outcomes) models and traditional linear mediation models, little effort has been devoted to dealing with mediators with zero-inflated structures due to challenges associated with excessive zeros. We develop a novel mediation modeling approach to address zero-inflated mediators containing true zeros and false zeros. The new approach can decompose the total mediation effect into two components induced by zero-inflated structures: the first component is attributable to the change in the mediator on it

SUBMITTER: Jiang M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10686235 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature