On the Role of Surrogates in Conformal Inference of Individual Causal Effects

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Main Authors: Gao, Chenyin, Gilbert, Peter B., Han, Larry
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gao, Chenyin
Gilbert, Peter B.
Han, Larry
author_facet Gao, Chenyin
Gilbert, Peter B.
Han, Larry
contents Learning the Individual Treatment Effect (ITE) is essential for personalized decision-making, yet causal inference has traditionally focused on aggregated treatment effects. While integrating conformal prediction with causal inference can provide valid uncertainty quantification for ITEs, the resulting prediction intervals are often excessively wide, limiting their practical utility. To address this limitation, we introduce \underline{S}urrogate-assisted \underline{C}onformal \underline{I}nference for \underline{E}fficient I\underline{N}dividual \underline{C}ausal \underline{E}ffects (SCIENCE), a framework designed to construct more efficient prediction intervals for ITEs. SCIENCE accommodates the covariate shifts between source data and target data and applies to various data configurations, including semi-supervised and surrogate-assisted semi-supervised learning. Leveraging semi-parametric efficiency theory, SCIENCE produces rate double-robust prediction intervals under mild rate convergence conditions, permitting the use of flexible non-parametric models to estimate nuisance functions. We quantify efficiency gains by comparing semi-parametric efficiency bounds with and without the surrogates. Simulation studies demonstrate that our surrogate-assisted intervals offer substantial efficiency improvements over existing methods while maintaining valid group-conditional coverage. Applied to the phase 3 Moderna COVE COVID-19 vaccine trial, SCIENCE illustrates how multiple surrogate markers can be leveraged to generate more efficient prediction intervals.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_12365
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Role of Surrogates in Conformal Inference of Individual Causal Effects
Gao, Chenyin
Gilbert, Peter B.
Han, Larry
Methodology
Statistics Theory
Applications
Machine Learning
Learning the Individual Treatment Effect (ITE) is essential for personalized decision-making, yet causal inference has traditionally focused on aggregated treatment effects. While integrating conformal prediction with causal inference can provide valid uncertainty quantification for ITEs, the resulting prediction intervals are often excessively wide, limiting their practical utility. To address this limitation, we introduce \underline{S}urrogate-assisted \underline{C}onformal \underline{I}nference for \underline{E}fficient I\underline{N}dividual \underline{C}ausal \underline{E}ffects (SCIENCE), a framework designed to construct more efficient prediction intervals for ITEs. SCIENCE accommodates the covariate shifts between source data and target data and applies to various data configurations, including semi-supervised and surrogate-assisted semi-supervised learning. Leveraging semi-parametric efficiency theory, SCIENCE produces rate double-robust prediction intervals under mild rate convergence conditions, permitting the use of flexible non-parametric models to estimate nuisance functions. We quantify efficiency gains by comparing semi-parametric efficiency bounds with and without the surrogates. Simulation studies demonstrate that our surrogate-assisted intervals offer substantial efficiency improvements over existing methods while maintaining valid group-conditional coverage. Applied to the phase 3 Moderna COVE COVID-19 vaccine trial, SCIENCE illustrates how multiple surrogate markers can be leveraged to generate more efficient prediction intervals.
title On the Role of Surrogates in Conformal Inference of Individual Causal Effects
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
Applications
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.12365