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arXiv · 1912.09936

Non-parametric efficient causal mediation with intermediate confounders

Iván Díaz·Nima S. Hejazi·Kara E. Rudolph·Mark J. van der Laan
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Abstract

Interventional effects for mediation analysis were proposed as a solution to the lack of identifiability of natural (in)direct effects in the presence of a mediator-outcome confounder affected by exposure. We present a theoretical and computational study of the properties of the interventional (in)direct effect estimands based on the efficient influence fucntion (EIF) in the non-parametric statistical model. We use the EIF to develop two asymptotically optimal, non-parametric estimators that leverage data-adaptive regression for estimation of the nuisance parameters: a one-step estimator and a targeted minimum loss estimator. A free and open source \texttt{R} package implementing our proposed estimators is made available on GitHub. We further present results establishing the conditions under which these estimators are consistent, multiply robust, $n^{1/2}$-consistent and efficient. We illustrate the finite-sample performance of the estimators and corroborate our theoretical results in a simulation study. We also demonstrate the use of the estimators in our motivating application to elucidate the mechanisms behind the unintended harmful effects that a housing intervention had on adolescent girls' risk behavior.

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Iván Díaz, Nima S. Hejazi, Kara E. Rudolph, Mark J. van der Laan. 2019-12-20. Non-parametric efficient causal mediation with intermediate confounders. https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet%2Fasaa085

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