Causal Inference Toolkit

The goal of this research project recently funded by PCORI is to develop a specialized toolkit – causal inference (CI-Toolkit) -- to provide a comprehensive, practical, and accessible guide to implementing advanced statistical causal techniques so researchers can ask and answer questions about cause and effect of various treatments – answers patients are most concerned about. Patients want to understand causation, not just the association – when making complicated health related decisions. Specifically, the CI-Toolkit has three major components:

1. Structured/tailored guidelines and recommendations for clinical researchers regarding use of such methods in large observational data.
2. A web-based user-friendly open-source software package that contains a set of functions and procedures to facilitate the use of IP weighting and g-formula approach.
3. Three case studies to illustrate the process of adapting guidelines and software developed in 1 and 2 to specific contexts and to show step-by-step implementation.