CAREER: Adaptive experiments towards learning treatment effect heterogeneity

职业：学习治疗效果异质性的适应性实验

• 批准号: 2239047
• 负责人: Jingshen Wang
• 金额: $ 45.28万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2028-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2239047&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Adaptive; experiments; towards; learning

Understanding and characterizing differential and heterogeneous causal effects have become increasingly important in many scientific fields. For example, in precision health, identifying differential treatment effects serves as an essential step towards materializing the benefits of precision health, because it provides evidence regarding how individuals with specific characteristics respond to a given treatment either in efficacy or in adverse effects. In social science research, evaluations of the effectiveness of government programs or public policies across different individuals inform more effective policy-making. As reliably designed randomized experiments often provide evidence of the highest grade for verifying the effectiveness of a treatment or an intervention, this research project aims to develop three randomized experimental design strategies for better learning causal effect heterogeneity. These design strategies are broad and will be applicable in clinical trials, social experiments in biomedical sciences, public health sectors, and online controlled experiments in technological enterprises. Since the project will develop modern experimental design strategies and new statistical methods with many applications, this research project will provide opportunities for integrating research with teaching and training students across different stages. The project will impact STEM education through the training of undergraduate and graduate students and the recruitment of students from underrepresented groups into (bio)statistical fields. Activities to achieve these education-related goals include introductory reading groups, course developments, university undergraduate research programs, and outreach activities to underrepresented minorities.This research project will develop three novel response adaptive experimental design strategies and theoretical insights toward learning treatment effect heterogeneity from a frequentist viewpoint. The first strategy will focus on designing randomized experiments to sequentially allocate experimental efforts so that subpopulations mostly harmed or benefited from a particular treatment can be efficiently identified. The second strategy will focus on learning treatment effect heterogeneity measured by the variability of the conditional causal effect variability. The learned heterogeneity allows the development of a new efficient covariate-adjusted response adaptive framework whose estimator may attain the best achievable efficiency. The third strategy aims to further materialize the benefit of treatment effect heterogeneity by designing randomized experiments to maximize participants' overall welfare. The research project is thus expected to open a new research connection between adaptive experiments and social welfare improvement.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在许多科学领域，理解和表征差异和异质因果影响已经变得越来越重要。例如，从精确的健康状态下，确定差异治疗效果是实现精度健康益处的重要一步，因为它提供了有关具有特定特征的个体在功效或不良影响方面对给定治疗的反应的证据。在社会科学研究中，对政府计划或不同个人的公共政策的有效性的评估可以为更有效的政策制定。由于可靠设计的随机实验通常提供了最高等级的证据，以验证治疗或干预措施的有效性，因此该研究项目旨在制定三种随机的实验设计策略，以更好地学习因果效应异质性。这些设计策略很广泛，将适用于临床试验，生物医学科学，公共卫生领域的社会实验以及技术企业中的在线受控实验。由于该项目将开发现代实验设计策略和许多应用程序的新统计方法，因此该研究项目将为将研究与跨不同阶段的教学和培训学生整合在一起。该项目将通过培训本科生和研究生的培训以及从代表性不足的群体招募（BIO）统计领域的学生。实现这些与教育相关的目标的活动包括入门阅读小组，课程发展，大学本科研究计划以及向代表性不足的少数群体提供的外展活动。该研究项目将开发三种新颖的反应自适应实验设计策略和理论上的理论见解，从经常观点来看，学习治疗效果异质性异质性。第一个策略将着重于设计随机实验以依次分配实验努力，以便可以有效地识别出大多受特定治疗损害或受益的亚群。第二种策略将集中于学习治疗效应的异质性，该异质性通过条件因果效应变异性的变异性衡量。学到的异质性允许开发新的有效协变量调整的自适应框架，其估计器可能会达到最佳的可实现效率。第三个策略旨在通过设计随机实验以最大化参与者的整体福利来进一步实现治疗效应异质性的好处。因此，预计该研究项目将在自适应实验和社会福利改善之间开设新的研究联系。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准通过评估来支持的。