Confounding-adjustment methods for the causal difference in medians.

ABSTRACT:

Background

With continuous outcomes, the average causal effect is typically defined using a contrast of expected potential outcomes. However, in the presence of skewed outcome data, the expectation (population mean) may no longer be meaningful. In practice the typical approach is to continue defining the estimand this way or transform the outcome to obtain a more symmetric distribution, although neither approach may be entirely satisfactory. Alternatively the causal effect can be redefined as a contrast of median potential outcomes, yet discussion of confounding-adjustment methods to estimate the causal difference in medians is limited. In this study we described and compared confounding-adjustment methods to address this gap.

Methods

The methods considered were multivariabl

SUBMITTER: Shepherd DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10702096 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature