upcoming (Feb 2020- April 2020) workshops and talks on quantifying the robustness of inferences (sensitivity analysis)
Ken Frank
What would it take to Change your Inference? Quantifying the Discourse about Causal Inferences in the Social Sciences
Motivation
Statistical inferences are often challenged because of uncontrolled bias. There may be bias due to uncontrolled confounding variables or non-random selection into a sample. We will answer the question about what it would take to change an inference by formalizing the sources of bias and quantifying the discourse about causal inferences in terms of those sources. For example, we will transform challenges such as “But the inference of a treatment effect might not be valid because of pre-existing differences between the treatment groups” to questions such as “How much bias must there have been due to uncontrolled pre-existing differences to make the inference invalid?” “QQQ% of the cases would have to be replaced with cases with no treatment effect to change the inference.”
Approaches
In part I we will use Rubin’s causal model to interpret how much bias there must be to invalidate an inference in terms of replacing observed cases with counterfactual cases or cases from an unsampled population. In part II, we will quantify the robustness of causal inferences in terms of correlations associated with unobserved variables or in unsampled populations. Calculations for bivariate and multivariate analysis will be presented using an app: http://konfound-it.com as well as macros in STATA and R and a spreadsheet for calculating indices [KonFound-it!].
Ken Frank
Spring events related to sensitivity/robustness analysis in different parts of the country. Perhaps see you at one of them.All related materials can be found at: https://msu.edu/~kenfrank/research.htm#causal
Workshop "What Would it take to Change your Inference" at the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.When: Wednesday, March 11: Noon-4pm,Where: Arlington Virginia. full description at the bottom of this email.Register: You will be able to sign up at (might not be available yet): https://www.sree.org/spring-2020Talk and Discussion about Quantifying the Robustness of Inferences.When: Thursday, March 19, TBDWhere: Boston College, Eric Dearing host.Register: Contact me if you will be in the area and want to drop in if there is room (kenf...@msu.edu).
Open class at MSU on March 30 and April 1, 1 p.m.-2:20 eastern. I teach sensitivity analysis within my course on regression. You can join either via zoom:
Full-day extended course at American Educational Research Association: PDC13 What Would it Take to Change Your Inference? Quantifying the Discourse about Causal Inferences in the Social Sciences. With Zixi Chen. For full description seeWhen: Friday, April 17, 2020 Time: 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.Where: San FranciscoRegister: Fee: $145.
100 Minute workshop at the American Sociological Association, San Francisco Aug 11-14. Not sure yet which day, but you will be able to register at: