Causal inference for non-mortality outcomes in the presence of death
Causal inference for non-mortality outcomes in the presence of death
复制标题
DOI：
10.1093/biostatistics/kxl027
复制
发表时间：
2007-07-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
West, Sheila K.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Egleston, Brian L.;Scharfstein, Daniel O.;West, Sheila K.
当研究参与者在测量发病率结果之前死亡时，在固定时间点评估基线暴露对发病率结果的因果影响通常是复杂的。在这种背景下，因果效应只对主要阶层的受试者有很好的定义，这些受试者无论暴露在什么环境中都会活着。在一个高死亡率人群中，受老年学研究人员感兴趣了解视力丧失对情绪困扰的因果影响的激励，我们调查了那些既有视力丧失又没有视力丧失的人的影响。由于这一群体不容易从数据中识别出来，视力损失也不是随机的，我们引入了一组科学驱动的假设来确定因果关系。由于这些假设无法通过经验加以验证，因此我们将我们的方法嵌入到敏感性分析框架中。我们应用了我们的方法，使用了来自索尔兹伯里眼科评估的前三轮调查数据，这是一项基于人群的老年人队列研究。我们还给出了一个仿真研究，验证了我们的方法。
Evaluation of the causal effect of a baseline exposure on a morbidity outcome at a fixed time point is often complicated when study participants die before morbidity outcomes are measured. In this setting, the causal effect is only well defined for the principal stratum of subjects who would live regardless of the exposure. Motivated by gerontologic researchers interested in understanding the causal effect of vision loss on emotional distress in a population with a high mortality rate, we investigate the effect among those who would live both with and without vision loss. Since this subpopulation is not readily identifiable from the data and vision loss is not randomized, we introduce a set of scientifically driven assumptions to identify the causal effect. Since these assumptions are not empirically verifiable, we embed our methodology within a sensitivity analysis framework. We apply our method using the first three rounds of survey data from the Salisbury Eye Evaluation, a population-based cohort study of older adults. We also present a simulation study that validates our method.