Exploration, Confirmation, and Replication in the Same Observational Study: A Two Team Cross-Screening Approach to Studying the Effect of Unwanted Pregnancy on Mothers' Later Life Outcomes

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Roy, Samrat, Bogomolov, Marina, Heller, Ruth, Claridge, Amy M., Beeson, Tishra, Small, Dylan S.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Roy, Samrat
Bogomolov, Marina
Heller, Ruth
Claridge, Amy M.
Beeson, Tishra
Small, Dylan S.
author_facet Roy, Samrat
Bogomolov, Marina
Heller, Ruth
Claridge, Amy M.
Beeson, Tishra
Small, Dylan S.
contents The long term consequences of unwanted pregnancies carried to term on mothers have not been much explored. We use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and propose a novel approach, namely two team cross-screening, to study the possible effects of unwanted pregnancies carried to term on various aspects of mothers' later-life mental health, physical health, economic well-being and life satisfaction. Our method, unlike existing approaches to observational studies, enables the investigators to perform exploratory data analysis, confirmatory data analysis and replication in the same study. This is a valuable property when there is only a single data set available with unique strengths to perform exploratory, confirmatory and replication analysis. In two team cross-screening, the investigators split themselves into two teams and the data is split as well according to a meaningful covariate. Each team then performs exploratory data analysis on its part of the data to design an analysis plan for the other part of the data. The complete freedom of the teams in designing the analysis has the potential to generate new unanticipated hypotheses in addition to a prefixed set of hypotheses. Moreover, only the hypotheses that looked promising in the data each team explored are forwarded for analysis (thus alleviating the multiple testing problem). These advantages are demonstrated in our study of the effects of unwanted pregnancies on mothers' later life outcomes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_14480
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploration, Confirmation, and Replication in the Same Observational Study: A Two Team Cross-Screening Approach to Studying the Effect of Unwanted Pregnancy on Mothers' Later Life Outcomes
Roy, Samrat
Bogomolov, Marina
Heller, Ruth
Claridge, Amy M.
Beeson, Tishra
Small, Dylan S.
Methodology
The long term consequences of unwanted pregnancies carried to term on mothers have not been much explored. We use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and propose a novel approach, namely two team cross-screening, to study the possible effects of unwanted pregnancies carried to term on various aspects of mothers' later-life mental health, physical health, economic well-being and life satisfaction. Our method, unlike existing approaches to observational studies, enables the investigators to perform exploratory data analysis, confirmatory data analysis and replication in the same study. This is a valuable property when there is only a single data set available with unique strengths to perform exploratory, confirmatory and replication analysis. In two team cross-screening, the investigators split themselves into two teams and the data is split as well according to a meaningful covariate. Each team then performs exploratory data analysis on its part of the data to design an analysis plan for the other part of the data. The complete freedom of the teams in designing the analysis has the potential to generate new unanticipated hypotheses in addition to a prefixed set of hypotheses. Moreover, only the hypotheses that looked promising in the data each team explored are forwarded for analysis (thus alleviating the multiple testing problem). These advantages are demonstrated in our study of the effects of unwanted pregnancies on mothers' later life outcomes.
title Exploration, Confirmation, and Replication in the Same Observational Study: A Two Team Cross-Screening Approach to Studying the Effect of Unwanted Pregnancy on Mothers' Later Life Outcomes
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14480