A test for the correct specification of marginal structural models.
causal inference
marginal structural models
model specification
Journal
Statistics in medicine
ISSN: 1097-0258
Titre abrégé: Stat Med
Pays: England
ID NLM: 8215016
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
30 07 2019
30 07 2019
Historique:
received:
25
05
2018
revised:
15
01
2019
accepted:
06
02
2019
pubmed:
12
3
2019
medline:
21
10
2020
entrez:
12
3
2019
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Marginal structural models (MSMs) allow estimating the causal effect of a time-varying exposure on an outcome in the presence of time-dependent confounding. The parameters of MSMs can be estimated utilizing an inverse probability of treatment weight estimator under certain assumptions. One of these assumptions is that the proposed causal model relating the outcome to exposure history is correctly specified. However, in practice, the true model is unknown. We propose a test that employs the observed data to attempt validating the assumption that the model is correctly specified. The performance of the proposed test is investigated with a simulation study. We illustrate our approach by estimating the effect of repeated exposure to psychosocial stressors at work on ambulatory blood pressure in a large cohort of white-collar workers in Québec City, Canada. Code examples in SAS and R are provided to facilitate the implementation of the test.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
3168-3183Informations de copyright
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.