Session 5 – Estimands and causal graphs

Analysts who look as though they disagree are often answering different questions, so this session asks what quantity the claim is about before it asks how to estimate it. The module fits each causal shape as well as describing it.

Work through	What you do	Timing
Causal graphs	Sections 1 to 3: an arrow as a claim you are making, the three shapes that a path can take, and what conditioning on a collider does to an estimate.	60 minutes
Causal graphs	Sections 4 to 6: the EU-frames graph written as R formulas, the adjustment set that follows from it, and what fixed effects cannot fix.	60 minutes
Causal graphs	Section 9: state an estimand for a question of your own and draw the graph that goes with it.	45 minutes

By the end of the session you have an estimand written in three parts – the unit-specific quantity, the target population and the aggregation – and a graph with an adjustment set that you derived from it.