Adaptive sparsening and smoothing of the treatment model for longitudinal causal inference using outcome-adaptive LASSO and marginal fused LASSO

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Schnitzer, Mireille E, Talbot, Denis, Liu, Yan, Berger, David, Wang, Guanbo, O'Loughlin, Jennifer, Sylvestre, Marie-Pierre, Ertefaie, Ashkan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Schnitzer, Mireille E
Talbot, Denis
Liu, Yan
Berger, David
Wang, Guanbo
O'Loughlin, Jennifer
Sylvestre, Marie-Pierre
Ertefaie, Ashkan
author_facet Schnitzer, Mireille E
Talbot, Denis
Liu, Yan
Berger, David
Wang, Guanbo
O'Loughlin, Jennifer
Sylvestre, Marie-Pierre
Ertefaie, Ashkan
contents Causal variable selection in time-varying treatment settings is challenging due to evolving confounding effects. Existing methods mainly focus on time-fixed exposures and are not directly applicable to time-varying scenarios. We propose a novel two-step procedure for variable selection when modeling the treatment probability at each time point. We first introduce a novel approach to longitudinal confounder selection using a Longitudinal Outcome Adaptive LASSO (LOAL) that will data-adaptively select covariates with theoretical justification of variance reduction of the estimator of the causal effect. We then propose an Adaptive Fused LASSO that can collapse treatment model parameters over time points with the goal of simplifying the models in order to improve the efficiency of the estimator while minimizing model misspecification bias compared with naive pooled logistic regression models. Our simulation studies highlight the need for and usefulness of the proposed approach in practice. We implemented our method on data from the Nicotine Dependence in Teens study to estimate the effect of the timing of alcohol initiation during adolescence on depressive symptoms in early adulthood.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_08283
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Adaptive sparsening and smoothing of the treatment model for longitudinal causal inference using outcome-adaptive LASSO and marginal fused LASSO
Schnitzer, Mireille E
Talbot, Denis
Liu, Yan
Berger, David
Wang, Guanbo
O'Loughlin, Jennifer
Sylvestre, Marie-Pierre
Ertefaie, Ashkan
Methodology
Causal variable selection in time-varying treatment settings is challenging due to evolving confounding effects. Existing methods mainly focus on time-fixed exposures and are not directly applicable to time-varying scenarios. We propose a novel two-step procedure for variable selection when modeling the treatment probability at each time point. We first introduce a novel approach to longitudinal confounder selection using a Longitudinal Outcome Adaptive LASSO (LOAL) that will data-adaptively select covariates with theoretical justification of variance reduction of the estimator of the causal effect. We then propose an Adaptive Fused LASSO that can collapse treatment model parameters over time points with the goal of simplifying the models in order to improve the efficiency of the estimator while minimizing model misspecification bias compared with naive pooled logistic regression models. Our simulation studies highlight the need for and usefulness of the proposed approach in practice. We implemented our method on data from the Nicotine Dependence in Teens study to estimate the effect of the timing of alcohol initiation during adolescence on depressive symptoms in early adulthood.
title Adaptive sparsening and smoothing of the treatment model for longitudinal causal inference using outcome-adaptive LASSO and marginal fused LASSO
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08283