论文标题
在未衡量的调解员结果下，与多个介体混淆的调解分析
Mediation Analysis with Multiple Mediators under Unmeasured Mediator-Outcome Confounding
论文作者
论文摘要
在健康和社会科学方面，人们通常感兴趣的是研究多个暴露后调解变量的联合调解效应。相对于整个介体组，对这种联合调解效应的识别通常不需要对结果的混淆。随着所考虑的调解人的数量的增加，这种关键假设可能会受到侵犯，因为通常不可行任何调解人。在本文中，我们开发了一种简单的两步方法，即矩估计程序，在存在潜在的未衡量的介体结果混淆的情况下同时评估多个调解人的调解。我们的鉴定结果利用了暴露效应对人群中每个中介者的异质性，这在各种经验环境下都是合理的。通过模拟和应用程序来说明拟议的估计量，以评估创伤后应激障碍症状在Covid-19期间卫生保健工作者之间自我效能和疲劳之间的关联中的介导作用。
It is often of interest in the health and social sciences to investigate the joint mediation effects of multiple post-exposure mediating variables. Identification of such joint mediation effects generally require no unmeasured confounding of the outcome with respect to the whole set of mediators. As the number of mediators under consideration grows, this key assumption is likely to be violated as it is often infeasible to intervene on any of the mediators. In this paper, we develop a simple two-step method of moments estimation procedure to assess mediation with multiple mediators simultaneously in the presence of potential unmeasured mediator-outcome confounding. Our identification result leverages heterogeneity of the exposure effect on each mediator in the population, which is plausible under a variety of empirical settings. The proposed estimators are illustrated through both simulations and an application to evaluate the mediating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in the association between self-efficacy and fatigue among health care workers during the COVID-19 outbreak.
