Tag: causal inference

Use of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to identify confounders in applied health research: review and recommendations

Neat paper by Tennant, P. W. G. et al. (2020): Use of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to identify confounders in applied health research: review and recommendations in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

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Recommendations from the paper

  1. The focal relationship(s) and estimand(s) of interest should be stated in the study aims
  2. The DAG(s) for each focal relationship and estimand of interest should be available
  3. DAGs should include all relevant variables, including those where direct measurements are unavailable
  4. Variables should be visually arranged so that all constituent arcs flow in the same direction
  5. Arcs should generally be assumed to exist between any two variables
  6. The DAG-implied adjustment set(s) for the estimand(s) of interest should be clearly stated
  7. The estimate(s) obtained from using the unmodified DAG-implied adjustment set(s)—or nearest approximation thereof—should be reported
  8. Alternative adjustment set(s) should be justified and their estimate(s) reported separately

John Fox on SEM

From an Appendix to An R and S-PLUS Companion to Applied Regression:

“A cynical view of SEMs is that their popularity in the social sciences reflects the legitimacy that the models appear to lend to causal interpretation of observational data, when in fact such interpretation is no less problematic than for other kinds of regression models applied to observational data. A more charitable interpretation is that SEMs are close to the kind of informal thinking about causal relationships that is common in social-science theorizing, and that, therefore, these models facilitate translating such theories into data analysis.”