Making DAGs Even More Useful: Using Augmented Causal Diagrams to Depict Counterfactual, Study Design, Measurement, Analytical, and Interventional Features.

Details

• Alternative Title:
  International Journal of Epidemiology, 2025, v. 54, no. 6: Making DAGs Even More Useful: Using Augmented Causal Diagrams to Depict Counterfactual, Study Design, Measurement, Analytical, and Interventional Features.
• Journal Article:
  International Journal of Epidemiology
• Personal Author:
  Arah, Onyebuchi A. ; Coates, Matthew M.
• Description:
  Since their mainstream introduction in the 1990s, causal diagrams, including directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), are increasingly used to depict our causal knowledge of the world we study and to guide study design, analysis, and interpretation for causal inference 1, 2. Beyond describing the data-generating mechanism, DAGs are typically used to select variables for confounding control 2. However, to do more, researchers have had to modify or augment their DAGs with additional features reflecting theoretical what-if scenarios or study-dependent processes affecting the data, analysis, and interpretation. In this journal, Mansournia et al. 3 show how to depict balancing scores on DAGs, a welcome addition to the growing use of augmented graphs. This commentary will first place this work in the broader context of how researchers have tried to do more with augmented causal diagrams, including augmented directed acyclic graphs (ADAGs) which we use more expansively to include all such graphs in this commentary
• Content Notes:
  Author manuscript
• Subjects:
  • Data Analysis
• Keywords:
  • directed acyclic graph
  • augmented directed acyclic graph
  • causal diagram
  • graphical augmentation
  • disease risk score
  • propensity score
• Source:
  International Journal of Epidemiology, 2025, v. 54, no. 6
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyaf207
• ISSN:
  0300-5771 ; 1464-3685
• Pubmed ID:
  41370626
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC12694401
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  T32 CA009142/CA/NCI NIH HHSUnited States/ ; T42 OH008412/OH/NIOSH CDC HHSUnited States/ ; UL1 TR001881/TR/NCATS NIH HHSUnited States/ ; NH/NIH HHSUnited States/
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Pages in Document:
  dyaf207(12 pdf pages)
• Volume:
  54
• Issue:
  6
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/260914/cdc_260914_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.01 MB]
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:0b2822562650de4d0d0f0348f0f506faa87f696d78d09269dea1317d0db1f01fb35763088ddef0d609f40c792b343488bbd24b2449e7f002ef2d73441b79544d