Sensitivity analysis for unobserved confounding of direct and indirect effects using uncertainty intervals

Statistics in Medicine
Anita LindmarkMarie Eriksson

Abstract

To estimate direct and indirect effects of an exposure on an outcome from observed data, strong assumptions about unconfoundedness are required. Since these assumptions cannot be tested using the observed data, a mediation analysis should always be accompanied by a sensitivity analysis of the resulting estimates. In this article, we propose a sensitivity analysis method for parametric estimation of direct and indirect effects when the exposure, mediator, and outcome are all binary. The sensitivity parameters consist of the correlations between the error terms of the exposure, mediator, and outcome models. These correlations are incorporated into the estimation of the model parameters and identification sets are then obtained for the direct and indirect effects for a range of plausible correlation values. We take the sampling variability into account through the construction of uncertainty intervals. The proposed method is able to assess sensitivity to both mediator-outcome confounding and confounding involving the exposure. To illustrate the method, we apply it to a mediation study based on the data from the Swedish Stroke Register (Riksstroke). An R package that implements the proposed method is available.

References

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Citations

Jan 30, 2021·Epidemiology·Ryan M Andrews, Vanessa Didelez
Jul 21, 2021·Pediatric Research·Dario EliasLucas G Gimenez
Jul 27, 2021·Colorectal Disease : the Official Journal of the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland·Klas HolmgrenMartin Rutegård
Dec 24, 2021·Frontiers in Psychology·Davood Tofighi

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