Causal mediation analysis for sparse and irregular longitudinal data

DOI10.1214/20-AOAS1427zbMATH Open1478.62348arXiv2007.01796OpenAlexW3179547127MaRDI QIDQ2245154FDOQ2245154

Authors: Shuxi Zeng, Stacy Rosenbaum, Susan C. Alberts, Elizabeth A. Archie, Fan Li 

Publication date: 15 November 2021

Published in: The Annals of Applied Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Causal mediation analysis seeks to investigate how the treatment effect of an exposure on outcomes is mediated through intermediate variables. Although many applications involve longitudinal data, the existing methods are not directly applicable to settings where the mediator and outcome are measured on sparse and irregular time grids. We extend the existing causal mediation framework from a functional data analysis perspective, viewing the sparse and irregular longitudinal data as realizations of underlying smooth stochastic processes. We define causal estimands of direct and indirect effects accordingly and provide corresponding identification assumptions. For estimation and inference, we employ a functional principal component analysis approach for dimension reduction and use the first few functional principal components instead of the whole trajectories in the structural equation models. We adopt the Bayesian paradigm to accurately quantify the uncertainties. The operating characteristics of the proposed methods are examined via simulations. We apply the proposed methods to a longitudinal data set from a wild baboon population in Kenya to investigate the causal relationships between early adversity, strength of social bonds between animals, and adult glucocorticoid hormone concentrations. We find that early adversity has a significant direct effect (a 9-14% increase) on females' glucocorticoid concentrations across adulthood, but find little evidence that these effects were mediated by weak social bonds.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.01796

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zbMATH Keywords

mediationcausal inferencelongitudinal datafunctional principal component analysissparse and irregular data

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Directional data; spatial statistics (62H11) Factor analysis and principal components; correspondence analysis (62H25) Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis (62P10) Functional data analysis (62R10)

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Cited In (3)

• Defining causal mediation with a longitudinal mediator and a survival outcome
• A causal mediation model for longitudinal mediators and survival outcomes with an application to animal behavior
• Mediation analysis with multiple exposures and multiple mediators

Uses Software

• fda (R)

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