PSweight_SW | R Documentation |
The function PSweight_SW
is used to estimate the average potential outcomes corresponding to
each treatment group among the target population. The function currently implements
the following types of weights: the inverse probability of treatment weights (IPW: target population is the combined population),
average treatment effect among the treated weights (treated: target population is the population receiving a specified treatment),
overlap weights (overlap: target population is the overlap population at clinical equipoise), matching weights (matching: target population
is population obtained under 1:1 matching), entropy weights (entropy: target population is the population weighted by the entropy function).
Augmented propensity score weighting estimators are also allowed, with propensity scores and outcome model estimates either estimated
within the function, or supplied by external routines. The function now includes support for survey designs that include specific survey weights,
mainly focusing on binary treatments for now by incorporating survey weights into propensity score estimation and both point and augmented estimators
for the outcome estimation.
PSweight_SW(
ps.formula = NULL,
ps.estimate = NULL,
trtgrp = NULL,
zname = NULL,
yname,
data,
weight = "overlap",
survey.indicator = FALSE,
survey.design = "Independent",
svywtname = NULL,
delta = 0,
augmentation = FALSE,
augmentation.type = "WET",
bootstrap = FALSE,
R = 50,
out.formula = NULL,
out.estimate = NULL,
family = "gaussian",
ps.method = "glm",
ps.control = list(),
out.method = "glm",
out.control = list()
)
ps.formula |
an object of class |
ps.estimate |
an optional matrix or data frame containing estimated (generalized) propensity scores for
each observation. Typically, this is an N by J matrix, where N is the number of observations and J is the
total number of treatment levels. Preferably, the column name of this matrix should match the name of treatment level,
if column name is missing or there is a mismatch, the column names would be assigned according to alphabatic order
of the treatment levels. A vector of propensity score estimates is also allowed in |
trtgrp |
an optional character defining the "treated" population for estimating the average treatment
effect among the treated (ATT). Only necessary if |
zname |
an optional character specifying the name of the treatment variable in |
yname |
an optional character specifying the name of the outcome variable in |
data |
an optional data frame containing the variables in the propensity score model
and outcome model (if augmented estimator is used). If not found in data, the variables are
taken from |
weight |
a character or vector of characters including the types of weights to be used.
|
survey.indicator |
logical. Indicates whether survey weights are used in the estimation.
Default is |
survey.design |
character. Specifies the survey design scenario for estimation. Acceptable values are "Retrospective", "Independent", and "Prospective". "Retrospective" indicates that the sampling process depends on both treatment assignment and covariates, "Independent" (the default) means that the sampling process is independent of treatment assignment, and "Prospective" signifies that sampling is conducted prior to treatment assignment, although treatment may later be influenced by the sampling process. |
svywtname |
an optional character specifying the name of the survey weight variable in |
delta |
trimming threshold for estimated (generalized) propensity scores. Should be no larger than 1 / number of treatment groups. Default is 0, corresponding to no trimming. |
augmentation |
logical. Indicate whether augmented weighting estimators should be used.
Default is |
augmentation.type |
a character specifying the type of augmentation to use when |
bootstrap |
logical. Indaicate whether bootstrap is used to estimate the standard error
of the point estimates. Default is |
R |
an optional integer indicating number of bootstrap replicates. Default is |
out.formula |
an object of class |
out.estimate |
an optional matrix or data frame containing estimated potential outcomes
for each observation. Typically, this is an N by J matrix, where N is the number of observations
and J is the total number of treatment levels. Preferably, the column name of this matrix should
match the name of treatment level, if column name is missing or there is a mismatch,
the column names would be assigned according to alphabatic order of the treatment levels, with a
similar mechanism as in |
family |
a description of the error distribution and link function to be used in the outcome model.
Only required if |
ps.method |
a character to specify the method for estimating propensity scores. |
ps.control |
a list to specify additional options when |
out.method |
a character to specify the method for estimating the outcome regression model. |
out.control |
a list to specify additional options when |
A typical form for ps.formula
is treatment ~ terms
where treatment
is the treatment
variable (identical to the variable name used to specify zname
) and terms
is a series of terms
which specifies a linear predictor for treatment
. Similarly, a typical form for out.formula
is
outcome ~ terms
where outcome
is the outcome variable (identical to the variable name
used to specify yname
) and terms
is a series of terms which specifies a linear
predictor for outcome
. Both ps.formula
and out.formula
by default specify generalized
linear models when ps.estimate
and/or out.estimate
is NULL
. The argument ps.method
and out.method
allow users to choose
models other than glm to fit the propensity score and outcome regression models for augmentation. Additional arguments in the gbm()
function can be supplied through the ps.control
and out.control
arguments. Please refer to the user manual of the gbm
package for all the
allowed arguments. "SuperLearner"
is also allowed in the ps.method
and out.method
arguments. Currently, the SuperLearner method only supports binary treatment with the default method set to "SL.glm"
. The estimation approach is default to "method.NNLS"
for both propensity and outcome regression models.
Prediction algorithms and other tuning parameters can also be passed through ps.control
and out.control
. Please refer to the user manual of the SuperLearner
package for all the allowed specifications.
The function now includes support for the survey setting, mainly focusing on binary treatments by incorporating survey weights into propensity score estimation and both point and augmented estimators for the outcome stage. In survey settings,
external propensity score estimates are not supported; both population-level and sample-level propensity scores are estimated using the internal routines.
When augmentation = TRUE
in the survey setting, three augmented estimators are supported: the moment estimator(MOM),
the clever covariate regression estimator(CVR), and the weighted regression estimator (WET, which is the
default). The user can select the desired estimator by setting the augmentation.type
parameter accordingly.
When comparing two treatments, ps.estimate
can either be a vector or a two-column matrix of estimated
propensity scores. If a vector is supplied, it is assumed to be the propensity scores to receive the treatment, and
the treatment group corresponds to the last group in the alphabetical order, unless otherwise specified by trtgrp
.
When comparing multiple (J>=3) treatments, ps.estimate
needs to be specified as an N by J matrix,
where N indicates the number of observations, and J indicates the total number of treatments.
This matrix specifies the estimated generalized propensity scores to receive each of the J treatments.
In general, ps.estimate
should have column names that indicate the level of the treatment variable,
which should match the levels given in Z
.
If column names are empty or there is a mismatch, the column names will be created following
the alphabetical order of values in Z
, and the rightmost column of ps.estimate
is assumed
to be the treatment group when estimating ATT. trtgrp
can also be used to specify the treatment
group for estimating ATT. The same mechanism applies to out.estimate
, except that the input for out.estimate
must be an N by J matrix, where each row corresponds to the estimated potential outcomes (corresponding to each treatment)
for each observation.
The argument zname
and/or yname
is required when ps.estimate
and/or out.estimate
is not NULL
.
In survey settings, when survey.indicator
is TRUE
, the argument svywtname
(which specifies the survey weight variable in data
) is required;
if svywtname
is not provided, a default survey weight of 1 is applied to all observations. The argument
survey.design
must be specified to reflect the sampling mechanism: for example, "Retrospective"
indicates
that the sampling process depends on both treatment assignment and covariates, "Independent"
assumes that sampling
is independent of treatment assignment, and "Prospective"
signifies that sampling is conducted prior to treatment assignment,
although treatment may later be influenced by the sampling results.
Current version of PSweight
allows for five types of propensity score weights used to estimate population level ATE (IPW), ATT (treated) and
ATO (overlap), ATM (matching) and ATEN (entropy) under survey settings. These weights are members of larger class of balancing weights defined in Li, Morgan, and Zaslavsky (2018).
Specific definitions of these weights are provided in Li, Morgan, and Zaslavsky (2018), Li and Greene (2013), Zhou, Matsouaka and Thomas (2020), Zeng, Li and Tong (2025).
When there is a practical violation of the positivity assumption, delta
defines the symmetric
propensity score trimming rule following Crump et al. (2009). With multiple treatments, delta
defines the
multinomial trimming rule introduced in Yoshida et al. (2019). The overlap weights can also be considered as
a data-driven continuous trimming strategy without specifying trimming rules, see Li, Thomas and Li (2019).
Additional details on balancing weights and generalized overlap weights for multiple treatment groups are provided in
Li and Li (2019). Zeng, Li, and Tong (2025) further specify how the survey weights can be incorporated into propensity score weighting under both retrospective and prospective scenarios.
Their approach supports both a weighting-only estimator and all three augmented estimators(MOM, CVR and WET), with corresponding sandwich variance estimators developed.
These enhancements are implemented in the current version of PSweight
.
If augmentation = TRUE
, an augmented weighting estimator will be implemented. For binary treatments, the augmented
weighting estimator is presented in Mao, Li and Greene (2018). For multiple treatments, the augmented weighting estimator is
mentioned in Li and Li (2019), and additional details will appear in our ongoing work (Zhou et al. 2020+). When
weight = "IPW"
, the augmented estimator is also referred to as a doubly-robust (DR) estimator.
In survey settings, the augmented estimator is further extended to support three variants: the moment estimator (MOM),
the clever covariate estimator (CVR), and the weighted regression estimator (WET); the default choice is WET.
Users can select the desired variant by specifying the augmentation.type
parameter.
When bootstrap = TRUE
, the variance will be calculated by nonparametric bootstrap, with R
bootstrap
replications. The default of R
is 50. Otherwise, the variance will be calculated using the sandwich variance
formula obtained in the M-estimation framework. In survey settings, however, bootstrapping is currently not supported;
we recommend that users employ the sandwich variance estimator instead.
PSweight_SW returns a PSweight_SW
object containing a list of the following values:
estimated propensity scores for both population and sample levels, average potential outcomes corresponding to each treatment,
variance-covariance matrix of the point estimates, the label for each treatment group,
and estimates in each bootstrap replicate if bootstrap = TRUE
.
A summary of PSweight_SW can be obtained with summary.PSweight
.
trtgrp
a character indicating the treatment group.
propensity
a data frame of estimated propensity scores. When survey.indicator = TRUE
, it is population level propensity score estimated by survey-weighted regression.
propensity.sample
a data frame of estimated sample level propensity scores. This element is included when survey.indicator = TRUE
.
muhat
average potential outcomes by treatment groups, with reference to specific target populations.
covmu
variance-covariance matrix of muhat
.
muboot
an optional list of point estimates in each bootstrap replicate bootstrap = TRUE
.
group
a table of treatment group labels corresponding to the output point estimates muhat
.
Crump, R. K., Hotz, V. J., Imbens, G. W., Mitnik, O. A. (2009). Dealing with limited overlap in estimation of average treatment effects. Biometrika, 96(1), 187-199.
Li, L., Greene, T. (2013). A weighting analogue to pair matching in propensity score analysis. The International Journal of Biostatistics, 9(2), 215-234.
Li, F., Morgan, K. L., Zaslavsky, A. M. (2018). Balancing covariates via propensity score weighting. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 113(521), 390-400.
Mao, H., Li, L., Greene, T. (2019). Propensity score weighting analysis and treatment effect discovery. Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 28(8), 2439-2454.
Li, F., Thomas, L. E., Li, F. (2019). Addressing extreme propensity scores via the overlap weights. American Journal of Epidemiology, 188(1), 250-257.
Yoshida, K., Solomon, D.H., Haneuse, S., Kim, S.C., Patorno, E., Tedeschi, S.K., Lyu, H., Franklin, J.M., Stürmer, T., Hernández-Díaz, S. and Glynn, R.J. (2019). Multinomial extension of propensity score trimming methods: A simulation study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 188(3), 609-616.
Li, F., Li, F. (2019). Propensity score weighting for causal inference with multiple treatments. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 13(4), 2389-2415.
Zhou, Y., Matsouaka, R. A., Thomas, L. (2020). Propensity score weighting under limited overlap and model misspecification. Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 29(12), 3721-3756.
Zeng, Y., Li, F., & Tong, G. (2025). Moving toward best practice when using propensity score weighting in survey observational studies. arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.16156.
data("psdata")
data("psdata_bin_prospective_fp")
data("psdata_bin_retrospective_fp")
# Define the formulas
ps.formula <- trt ~ cov1 + cov2 + cov3 + cov4 + cov5 + cov6
out.formula <- Y ~ cov1 + cov2 + cov3 + cov4 + cov5 + cov6
# Prospective design without augmentation
pato1_sw <- PSweight_SW(ps.formula = ps.formula, yname = "Y",
data = psdata_bin_prospective_fp, weight = "overlap",
survey.indicator = TRUE, survey.design = "Prospective",
svywtname = "survey_weight",
delta = 0.1, augmentation = FALSE, bootstrap = FALSE, R = 50,
out.formula = NULL, out.estimate = NULL, family = "gaussian",
ps.method = "glm", ps.control = list(),
out.method = "glm", out.control = list())
summary(pato1_sw)
# Retrospective design with augmentation using the Weighted Regression Estimator(WET) estimator
pato2_sw <- PSweight_SW(ps.formula = ps.formula, yname = "Y",
data = psdata_bin_retrospective_fp, weight = "overlap",
survey.indicator = TRUE, survey.design = "Retrospective",
svywtname = "survey_weight",
delta = 0.1, augmentation = TRUE, augmentation.type = "WET",
bootstrap = FALSE, R = 50,
out.formula = out.formula, out.estimate = NULL, family = "gaussian",
ps.method = "glm", ps.control = list(),
out.method = "glm", out.control = list())
summary(pato2_sw)
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