Assessing Sensitivity to an Unobserved Binary Covariate in an Observational Study with Binary Outcome

A method for assessing the sensitivity of causal conclusions to an unmeasured patient characteristic relevant to both treatment assignment and response from observational studies with a binary outcome and an observed categorical covariate is proposed.

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper proposes a simple technique for assessing the range of plausible causal conclusions from observational studies with a binary outcome and an observed categorical covariate. The technique assesses the sensitivity of conclusions to assumptions about an unobserved binary covariate relevant to both treatment assignment and response. A medical study of coronary artery disease is used to illustrate the technique.