Sensitivity Analysis for Pretreatment Confounding With Multiple Mediators

2021
The causal mediation literature has developed techniques to assess the sensitivity of an inference to pretreatment confounding, but these techniques are limited to the case of a single mediator. In this article, we extend sensitivity analysis to possible violations of pretreatment confounding in the case of multiple mediators. In particular, we develop sensitivity analyses under three alternative approaches to effect decomposition: (1) jointly considered mediators, (2) identifiable direct and indirect paths, and (3) interventional analogues effects. With reasonable assumptions, each approach reduces to a single procedure to assess sensitivity in the presence of simultaneous pre- and posttreatment confounding. We demonstrate our sensitivity analysis techniques with a framing experiment that examines whether anxiety mediates respondents' attitudes toward immigration in response to an information prompt.
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL STATISTICS
页码:85-108|卷号:46|期号:1
ISSN:1076-9986
收录类型
SSCI
发表日期
2021
学科领域
循证教育学
国家
美国
语种
英语
DOI
10.3102/1076998620934500
其他关键词
BIAS; ANXIETY; ERROR; IMMIGRATION; EMOTIONS
EISSN
1935-1054
被引频次(WOS)
2
被引更新日期
2022-01
来源机构
University of California System University of California Riverside University of California System University of California Riverside University of California System University of California Riverside
关键词
cognitive processes development experimental design interventional analogues effects jointly considered mediators identifiable paths mediation