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Efficiently transporting causal direct and indirect effects to new populations under intermediate confounding and with multiple mediators.

ABSTRACT: The same intervention can produce different effects in different sites. Existing transport mediation estimators can estimate the extent to which such differences can be explained by differences in compositional factors and the mechanisms by which mediating or intermediate variables are produced; however, they are limited to consider a single, binary mediator. We propose novel nonparametric estimators of transported interventional (in)direct effects that consider multiple, high-dimensional mediators and a single, binary intermediate variable. They are multiply robust, efficient, asymptotically normal, and can incorporate data-adaptive estimation of nuisance parameters. They can be applied to understand differences in treatment effects across sites and/or to predict treatment effects in a target site based on outcome data in source sites.

SUBMITTER: Rudolph KE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9295139 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Efficiently transporting causal direct and indirect effects to new populations under intermediate confounding and with multiple mediators.

Rudolph Kara E KE Díaz Iván I

Biostatistics (Oxford, England) 20220701 3

The same intervention can produce different effects in different sites. Existing transport mediation estimators can estimate the extent to which such differences can be explained by differences in compositional factors and the mechanisms by which mediating or intermediate variables are produced; however, they are limited to consider a single, binary mediator. We propose novel nonparametric estimators of transported interventional (in)direct effects that consider multiple, high-dimensional mediat ...[more]

PMID: 33528006

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