Targeted maximum likelihood estimation for marginal time-dependent treatment effects under density misspecification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Targeted maximum likelihood methods have been proposed to estimate treatment effects for longitudinal data in the presence of time-dependent confounders. This class of methods has been mathematically proven to be doubly robust and to optimize the asymptotic estimating efficiency among the class of regular, semi-parametric estimators when all estimated density components are correctly specified. We show that methods previously proposed to build a one-step estimator with a logistic loss function generalize to a generalized linear loss function, and so may be applied naturally to an outcome that can be described by any exponential family member. We evaluate several methods for estimating unstructured marginal treatment effects for data with two time intervals in a simulation study, showing that these estimators have competitively low bias and variance in an array of misspecified situations, and can be made to perform well under near-positivity violations. We apply the methods to the PROmotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial data, demonstrating that longer term breastfeeding can protect infants from gastrointestinal infection.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.027 | 0.119 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".