Population-average mediation analysis for zero-inflated count outcomes.

ABSTRACT: Mediation analysis is an increasingly popular statistical method for explaining causal pathways to inform intervention. While methods have increased, there is still a dearth of robust mediation methods for count outcomes with excess zeroes. Current mediation methods addressing this issue are computationally intensive, biased, or challenging to interpret. To overcome these limitations, we propose a new mediation methodology for zero-inflated count outcomes using the marginalized zero-inflated Poisson (MZIP) model and the counterfactual approach to mediation. This novel work gives population-average mediation effects whose variance can be estimated rapidly via delta method. This methodology is extended to cases with exposure-mediator interactions. We apply this novel methodology to explore i

SUBMITTER: Sims A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11472297 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature