{"title":"Revisiting the effects of maternal education on adolescents' academic performance: Doubly robust estimation in a network-based observational study.","authors":"Vanessa McNealis, Erica E M Moodie, Nema Dean","doi":"10.1093/jrsssc/qlae008","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In many contexts, particularly when study subjects are adolescents, peer effects can invalidate typical statistical requirements in the data. For instance, it is plausible that a student's academic performance is influenced both by their own mother's educational level as well as that of their peers. Since the underlying social network is measured, the Add Health study provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of maternal college education on adolescent school performance, both direct and indirect. However, causal inference on populations embedded in social networks poses technical challenges, since the typical no interference assumption no longer holds. While inverse probability-of-treatment weighted (IPW) estimators have been developed for this setting, they are often highly unstable. Motivated by the question of maternal education, we propose doubly robust (DR) estimators combining models for treatment and outcome that are consistent and asymptotically normal if either model is correctly specified. We present empirical results that illustrate the DR property and the efficiency gain of DR over IPW estimators even when the treatment model is misspecified. Contrary to previous studies, our robust analysis does not provide evidence of an indirect effect of maternal education on academic performance within adolescents' social circles in Add Health.</p>","PeriodicalId":1,"journal":{"name":"Accounts of Chemical Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":16.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11175826/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Accounts of Chemical Research","FirstCategoryId":"100","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jrsssc/qlae008","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/6/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In many contexts, particularly when study subjects are adolescents, peer effects can invalidate typical statistical requirements in the data. For instance, it is plausible that a student's academic performance is influenced both by their own mother's educational level as well as that of their peers. Since the underlying social network is measured, the Add Health study provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of maternal college education on adolescent school performance, both direct and indirect. However, causal inference on populations embedded in social networks poses technical challenges, since the typical no interference assumption no longer holds. While inverse probability-of-treatment weighted (IPW) estimators have been developed for this setting, they are often highly unstable. Motivated by the question of maternal education, we propose doubly robust (DR) estimators combining models for treatment and outcome that are consistent and asymptotically normal if either model is correctly specified. We present empirical results that illustrate the DR property and the efficiency gain of DR over IPW estimators even when the treatment model is misspecified. Contrary to previous studies, our robust analysis does not provide evidence of an indirect effect of maternal education on academic performance within adolescents' social circles in Add Health.
在很多情况下,特别是当研究对象是青少年时,同伴效应会使数据中典型的统计要求失效。例如,学生的学业成绩可能既受其母亲教育水平的影响,也受其同伴教育水平的影响。由于对基本社会网络进行了测量,"Add Health "研究提供了一个独特的机会来研究母亲的大学教育对青少年学习成绩的直接和间接影响。然而,由于典型的无干扰假设不再成立,因此对嵌入社会网络的人群进行因果推断面临技术挑战。虽然针对这种情况已经开发出了治疗概率反向加权(IPW)估算器,但这些估算器往往非常不稳定。受孕产妇教育问题的启发,我们提出了结合治疗模型和结果模型的双重稳健(DR)估计器,如果其中任何一个模型指定正确,这些估计器都是一致和渐近正常的。我们提出的实证结果表明了 DR 特性以及 DR 相对于 IPW 估计器的效率增益,即使在处理模型被错误指定的情况下也是如此。与以往的研究相反,我们的稳健分析没有提供证据表明,在 Add Health 的青少年社交圈中,母亲教育对学习成绩有间接影响。
期刊介绍:
Accounts of Chemical Research presents short, concise and critical articles offering easy-to-read overviews of basic research and applications in all areas of chemistry and biochemistry. These short reviews focus on research from the author’s own laboratory and are designed to teach the reader about a research project. In addition, Accounts of Chemical Research publishes commentaries that give an informed opinion on a current research problem. Special Issues online are devoted to a single topic of unusual activity and significance.
Accounts of Chemical Research replaces the traditional article abstract with an article "Conspectus." These entries synopsize the research affording the reader a closer look at the content and significance of an article. Through this provision of a more detailed description of the article contents, the Conspectus enhances the article's discoverability by search engines and the exposure for the research.