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Citation

Keil, Alexander P.; Daza, Eric J.; Engel, Stephanie M.; Buckley, Jessie P.; & Edwards, Jessie K. (2018). A Bayesian Approach to the G-Formula. Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 27(10), 3183-3204. PMCID: PMC5790647

Abstract

Epidemiologists often wish to estimate quantities that are easy to communicate and correspond to the results of realistic public health interventions. Methods from causal inference can answer these questions. We adopt the language of potential outcomes under Rubin's original Bayesian framework and show that the parametric g-formula is easily amenable to a Bayesian approach. We show that the frequentist properties of the Bayesian g-formula suggest it improves the accuracy of estimates of causal effects in small samples or when data are sparse. We demonstrate an approach to estimate the effect of environmental tobacco smoke on body mass index among children aged 4-9 years who were enrolled in a longitudinal birth cohort in New York, USA. We provide an algorithm and supply SAS and Stan code that can be adopted to implement this computational approach more generally.

URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0962280217694665

Reference Type

Journal Article

Year Published

2018

Journal Title

Statistical Methods in Medical Research

Author(s)

Keil, Alexander P.
Daza, Eric J.
Engel, Stephanie M.
Buckley, Jessie P.
Edwards, Jessie K.

Article Type

Regular

PMCID

PMC5790647

ORCiD

Edwards, J -0000-0002-1741-335X