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โš–๏ธ Propensity Score Weighting (PSW)

PSW is a technique used to adjust for confounding in observational studies by reweighting units based on their estimated probability of receiving treatment.


1. ๐Ÿงช Simulate Confounded Data

set.seed(123)
n <- 1000

X1 <- rnorm(n)
X2 <- rbinom(n, 1, 0.5)
logit_p <- -0.5 + 0.7 * X1 + 1.2 * X2
p_treat <- 1 / (1 + exp(-logit_p))
W <- rbinom(n, 1, p_treat)

# True treatment effect is 3
Y <- 3 * W + 0.5 * X1 + 0.8 * X2 + rnorm(n)

data <- data.frame(X1, X2, W, Y)
head(data)
##            X1 X2 W          Y
## 1 -0.56047565  0 0 -0.7918415
## 2 -0.23017749  0 1  3.1218491
## 3  1.55870831  0 1  3.2377650
## 4  0.07050839  1 1  5.0544818
## 5  0.12928774  0 0  0.2387797
## 6  1.71506499  1 1  4.0422642

2. ๐ŸŽฏ Estimate Propensity Scores

ps_model <- glm(W ~ X1 + X2, data = data, family = binomial())
data$pscore <- predict(ps_model, type = "response")

3. โš–๏ธ Compute Weights (Inverse Probability of Treatment Weights)

data$wt <- ifelse(data$W == 1, 1 / data$pscore, 1 / (1 - data$pscore))
summary(data$wt)
##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
##   1.047   1.377   1.671   1.996   2.268   9.854

4. ๐Ÿงฎ Estimate Weighted Treatment Effect

design <- svydesign(ids = ~1, weights = ~wt, data = data)
model_psw <- svyglm(Y ~ W, design = design)
summary(model_psw)
## 
## Call:
## svyglm(formula = Y ~ W, design = design)
## 
## Survey design:
## svydesign(ids = ~1, weights = ~wt, data = data)
## 
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)  0.37767    0.05965   6.331 3.67e-10 ***
## W            2.99871    0.08407  35.671  < 2e-16 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## (Dispersion parameter for gaussian family taken to be 1.307041)
## 
## Number of Fisher Scoring iterations: 2

5. ๐Ÿ“Š Visualize Propensity Score Overlap

ggplot(data, aes(x = pscore, fill = factor(W)))

  geom_density(alpha = 0.5)
## geom_density: na.rm = FALSE, orientation = NA, outline.type = upper
## stat_density: na.rm = FALSE, orientation = NA
## position_identity
  labs(title = "Propensity Score Distribution by Treatment",
       x = "Propensity Score", fill = "Treatment")
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## [1] "Propensity Score"
## 
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## 
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## 
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โœ… Summary

PSW reduces confounding by balancing covariates across treatment groups, allowing us to estimate causal effects in non-randomized data.


๐Ÿ“– References

  • Rosenbaum & Rubin (1983). The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies
  • Stuart (2010). Matching Methods for Causal Inference: A Review and a Look Forward