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Reducing bias through directed acyclic graphs

2008· article· en· 1,410 citations· W2089198100 on OpenAlex· 10.1186/1471-2288-8-70

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A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

Canadian affiliationAn author listed a Canadian institution. This is the only route the usual frame has.
Canadian funderA Canadian agency funded it. The work may carry no Canadian affiliation at all.

Machine scores (provisional)

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

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Opus teacher head0.912
GPT teacher head0.658
Teacher spread
0.254 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation status
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The objective of most biomedical research is to determine an unbiased estimate of effect for an exposure on an outcome, i.e. to make causal inferences about the exposure. Recent developments in epidemiology have shown that traditional methods of identifying confounding and adjusting for confounding may be inadequate. DISCUSSION: The traditional methods of adjusting for "potential confounders" may introduce conditional associations and bias rather than minimize it. Although previous published articles have discussed the role of the causal directed acyclic graph approach (DAGs) with respect to confounding, many clinical problems require complicated DAGs and therefore investigators may continue to use traditional practices because they do not have the tools necessary to properly use the DAG approach. The purpose of this manuscript is to demonstrate a simple 6-step approach to the use of DAGs, and also to explain why the method works from a conceptual point of view. SUMMARY: Using the simple 6-step DAG approach to confounding and selection bias discussed is likely to reduce the degree of bias for the effect estimate in the chosen statistical model.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

The record

Venue
BMC Medical Research Methodology
Topic
Advanced Causal Inference Techniques
Field
Mathematics
Canadian institutions
McGill UniversityJewish General Hospital
Funders
McGill University Health CentreMcGill University
Keywords
Directed acyclic graphConfoundingCausal inferenceSelection biasComputer scienceOutcome (game theory)EconometricsSimple (philosophy)Causality (physics)StatisticsMathematicsAlgorithm
Has abstract in OpenAlex
yes