MacMillan-CSAP Workshop on Quantitative Research Methods: Teppei Yamamoto (MIT), “Design, Identification, and Sensitivity Analysis for Patient Preference Trials”

Event time: 
Thursday, October 1, 2015 - 4:00pm through 5:15pm
Event description: 

Abstract: Social and medical scientists are often concerned that the external validity of experimental results may be compromised because of heterogeneous treatment effects. If a treatment has different effects on those who would choose to take it and those who would not, the average treatment effect estimated in a standard randomized controlled trial(RCT) may give a misleading picture of its overall impact outside of the study sample. Patient preference trials (PPTs), where participants’ preferences over treatment options are incorporated in the study design, provide a possible solution. In this paper, we provide for the first time a systematic analysis of PPTs based on the potential outcomes framework of causal inference. We propose a general design for PPTs with multi-valued treatments, where participants state their preferred treatments and are then randomized into either a standard RCT or a self-selection condition. We derive nonparametric sharp bounds on the average causal effects among each choice-based subpopulation of participants under the proposed design. Finally, we propose a sensitivity analysis for the violation of the key ignorability assumption sufficient for identifying the target causal quantity. The proposed design and methodology are illustrated with an original study of partisan news media and its behavioral impact.

Teppei Yamamoto is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the current holder of the Alfred Henry and Jean Morrison Hayes Career Development Chair at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is broadly interested in the development of quantitative methods for political science data, with particular focus on statistical methods for causal inference and applications for electoral studies and comparative political behavior.

This workshop series is being sponsored by the ISPS Center for the Study of American Politics and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale with support from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund.

Event type 
Seminar