A causal mediation model for longitudinal mediators and survival outcomes with an application to animal behavior
From MaRDI portal
Publication:6050892
DOI10.1007/S13253-022-00490-6arXiv2104.08344MaRDI QIDQ6050892FDOQ6050892
Authors: Shuxi Zeng, Elizabeth C. Lange, Elizabeth A. Archie, F. A. Campos, Susan C. Alberts, Fan Li 
Publication date: 12 October 2023
Published in: Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)
Abstract: In animal behavior studies, a common goal is to investigate the causal pathways between an exposure and outcome, and a mediator that lies in between. Causal mediation analysis provides a principled approach for such studies. Although many applications involve longitudinal data, the existing causal mediation models are not directly applicable to settings where the mediators are measured on irregular time grids. In this paper, we propose a causal mediation model that accommodates longitudinal mediators on arbitrary time grids and survival outcomes simultaneously. We take a functional data analysis perspective and view longitudinal mediators as realizations of underlying smooth stochastic processes. We define causal estimands of direct and indirect effects accordingly and provide corresponding identification assumptions. We employ a functional principal component analysis approach to estimate the mediator process, and propose a Cox hazard model for the survival outcome that flexibly adjusts the mediator process. We then derive a g-computation formula to express the causal estimands using the model coefficients. The proposed method is applied to a longitudinal data set from the Amboseli Baboon Research Project to investigate the causal relationships between early adversity, adult physiological stress responses, and survival among wild female baboons. We find that adversity experienced in early life has a significant direct effect on females' life expectancy and survival probability, but find little evidence that these effects were mediated by markers of the stress response in adulthood. We further developed a sensitivity analysis method to assess the impact of potential violation to the key assumption of sequential ignorability.
Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.08344
Cites Work
- Corrected confidence bands for functional data using principal components
- Bayesian dynamic regression models for interval censored survival data with application to children dental health
- Imputation strategies for the estimation of natural direct and indirect effects
- Functional data analysis.
- Functional Data Analysis for Sparse Longitudinal Data
- Causal inference for statistics, social, and biomedical sciences. An introduction
- Correcting for Noncompliance and Dependent Censoring in an AIDS Clinical Trial with Inverse Probability of Censoring Weighted (IPCW) Log‐Rank Tests
- A new approach to causal inference in mortality studies with a sustained exposure period—application to control of the healthy worker survivor effect
- Bayesian survival analysis
- Covariate adjusted functional principal components analysis for longitudinal data
- Functional single index models for longitudinal data
- Semiparametric theory for causal mediation analysis: efficiency bounds, multiple robustness and sensitivity analysis
- Identification, inference and sensitivity analysis for causal mediation effects
- Mediation Analysis with time Varying Exposures and Mediators
- Bias in the last observation carried forward method under informative dropout
- Functional causal mediation analysis with an application to brain connectivity
- A framework for Bayesian nonparametric inference for causal effects of mediation
- Bayesian methods for multiple mediators: relating principal stratification and causal mediation in the analysis of power plant emission controls
- Estimating causal effects of air quality regulations using principal stratification for spatially correlated multivariate intermediate outcomes
- Principal ignorability in mediation analysis: through and beyond sequential ignorability
- Bayesian inference for the causal effect of mediation
- Bayesian Function-on-Scalars Regression for High-Dimensional Data
- Defining causal mediation with a longitudinal mediator and a survival outcome
- Causal mediation analysis for sparse and irregular longitudinal data
Cited In (2)
This page was built for publication: A causal mediation model for longitudinal mediators and survival outcomes with an application to animal behavior
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6050892)
