Vortrag
Bridging data and decisions: How strings of numbers can honestly guide future policies
Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Mats Stensrud
Datum: 25.11.22 Zeit: 15.15 - 16.15 Raum: ETH HG G 19.1
Investigators often express interest in effects that quantify the mechanism by which a treatment (exposure) affects an outcome. In this presentation, I will discuss how to formulate and choose effects that quantify mechanisms, beyond conventional average causal effects. I will consider the perspective of a decision maker, such as a patient, doctor or drug developer. I will emphasize that a careful articulation of a practically useful research question should either map to decision making at this point in time or in the future. A common feature of effects that are practically useful is that they correspond to possibly hypothetical but well-defined interventions in identifiable (sub)populations. To illustrate my points, I will consider examples that were recently used to motivate consideration of mechanistic effects, e.g. in clinical trials. In all of these examples, I will suggest different causal effects that correspond to explicit research questions of practical interest. These proposed effects also require less stringent identification assumptions.