Causal Inference Lecture Intro
Causal Inference Lecture Intro
Qingyuan Zhao
Disclaimer
I am a statistician who work on causal inference, but not a social scientist.
Bad news: What’s in this lecture may not reflect the current practice of
causal inference in social sciences.
Good news (hopefully): What’s in this lecture will provide you an
up-to-date view on the design, methodology, and interpretation of causal
inference (especially observational studies).
I tried to make the materials as accessible as possible, but some amount of
maths seemed inevitable. Please bear with me and don’t hesitate to ask
questions.
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Jan 2010 Jan 2012 Jan 2014 Jan 2016 Jan 2018 Jan 2020
Time
Fundamental logic*
1 Suppose we let half of the participants to receive the treatment at random,
2 If significantly more treated participants have better outcome,
3 Then the treatment must be beneficial.
Note that the randomisation inference treats X and Y as given and only
considers randomness in the treatment A ∼ π (which is exactly the
randomness introduced by the experimenter).
Regression analysis
Advantages:
1 Account for treatment effect heterogeneity.
2 Well-developed extensions: mixed-effect models, generalised linear models,
Cox proportional-hazards models, etc.
Disadvantages:
1 Inference usually relies on normality or large-sample approximations.
2 Causal interpretation is model-dependent!
Qingyuan Zhao (Stats Lab) Causal Inference: An Introduction SSRMP 11 / 57
Internal vs. external validity
Internal validity
Campbell and Stanley (1963): “Whether the experimental treatments make a
difference in this specific experimental instance”.
Exactly what randomisation inference tries to do.
External validity
Shadish, Cook and Campbell (2002): “Whether the cause-effect relationship
holds over variation in persons, settings, treatment variables, and
measurement variables”.
Related concepts
Another important concept in social sciences is construct validity: “the
validity if inferences about the higher order constructs that represent
sampling particulars”. See Shadish et al. (2002) for more discussion.
Perice’s three kinds of inferences: deduction, induction, abduction.
X
Analysis Modelling
Non-compliance
People may not comply with assigned treatment or drop out during the study.
For observational studies, we need a definition of causality that does not hinge
on (explicit) randomisation.
Pioneers in causal inference have come up with three definitions/languages:
1 Counterfactual (also called potential outcome);
2 Causal graphical model;
3 Structural equation model.
i Yi (0) Yi (1) Ai Yi
1 -3.7 ? 0 -3.7
2 2.3 ? 0 2.3
3 ? 7.4 1 7.4
4 0.8 ? 0 0.8
.. .. .. .. ..
. . . . .
Rubin calls this the “science table” (I didn’t find this terminology useful).
The goal of causal inference is to infer the difference
Distribution of Y (0) vs. Distribution of Y (1).
Example: Average treatment effect is defined as E[Y (1) − Y (0)].
Qingyuan Zhao (Stats Lab) Causal Inference: An Introduction SSRMP 17 / 57
Part II: How to define causality?
Definition 1: Counterfactuals (Neyman, 1923; Rubin, 1974)
We would like to infer about the difference between
A Y
A Y
Y (a) = FY (a, X , Y ).
X1 X2
A a Y (a)
Analysis Modelling
Qingyuan Zhao (Stats Lab) Causal Inference: An Introduction SSRMP 24 / 57
Part III: Designing observational studies
Analysis Modelling
The first term (Design bias) is fixed once we decide how to collect data.
The last two terms resemble the familiar bias-variance trade-off in statistics.
We can hope to make it small by using better statistical methods and or
having a large sample.
=⇒ Design Modelling > Analysis.
Qingyuan Zhao (Stats Lab) Causal Inference: An Introduction SSRMP 27 / 57
Design 1: Controlling for confounders
X1 X2
A Y
A Y
This means that the treated participants and control participants have
overlapping X distributions.
In other words, any study participant have at least some chance of receiving
treatment (or control).
You should always check the overlap assumption and define your study
population accordingly (e.g. by comparing histograms).
Matching methods are helpful in this regard, because you can examine
whether the matched participants are indeed similar.
Z A Y
Examples of IV
Draft lottery for Vietnam war (treatment: military service).
Distance to closest college (treatment: college education).
Favourable growing condition for crops (treatment: market price, outcome:
market demand).
Randomised cash incentive to quit smoking (treatment: quit smoking).
Randomised treatment assignment (treatment: actual treatment received,
could be different to the IV due to non-compliance).
Qingyuan Zhao (Stats Lab) Causal Inference: An Introduction SSRMP 37 / 57
Assumptions for instrumental variables
Z A Y
1 Z must affect A.
2 There is no unmeasured Z -Y confounders.
3 There is no direct effect from Z to Y .
Z z A(z) a Y (a)
Z A Y
Additional assumptions
Instrumental variable design often makes additional assumptions. Examples:
Homogeneity: Y (A = 1) − Y (A = 0) is constant.
Monotonicity: A(Z = 1) ≥ A(Z = 0) (e.g. IV is random encouragement).
● Y(0)
Y(1)
Y
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Statistical methods
Broken line regression: assume
(
α0 + γ0 x, if x < c,
E[Y | X ] =
α1 + γ1 x, if x ≥ c,
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Y
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Z A Y
βU
X2 U1 U2 X5
X3 X6
W A Y
Analysis Modelling
The Statistical Laboratory has a free consulting service called Statistics Clinic
(http://www.talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/21850).
I run a reading group in causal inference
(http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/105688).
I run a Part III course in causal inference for maths students
(http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~qz280/teaching/Causal_
Inference_2019.html).
There are several causal inference researchers in MRC Biostatistics Unit,
Cambridge social sciences and other subjects.
Best way to reach me: email me (qz280@cam) about my availability in the
Statistics Clinic.