Estimation of Natural Indirect Effects Robust to Unmeasured Confounding and Mediator Measurement Error.

ABSTRACT: The use of causal mediation analysis to evaluate the pathways by which an exposure affects an outcome is widespread in the social and biomedical sciences. Recent advances in this area have established formal conditions for identification and estimation of natural direct and indirect effects. However, these conditions typically involve stringent assumptions of no unmeasured confounding and that the mediator has been measured without error. These assumptions may fail to hold in many practical settings where mediation methods are applied. The goal of this article is two-fold. First, we formally establish that the natural indirect effect can in fact be identified in the presence of unmeasured exposure-outcome confounding provided there is no additive interaction between the mediator and unmeas

SUBMITTER: Fulcher IR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8672797 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature