Third-variable effect analysis with multilevel additive models

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-23-2020

Publication Title

PLoS ONE

Abstract

Third-variable effect refers to the effect transmitted by third-variables that intervene in the relationship between an exposure and a response variable. Third-variable effect analysis has been broadly studied in many fields. However, it remains a challenge for researchers to differentiate indirect effect of individual factor from multiple third-variables, especially when the involving variables are of hierarchical structure. Yu et al. (2014) defined third-variable effects that were consistent for all different types of response (categorical or continuous), exposure, or third-variables. With these definitions, multiple third-variables can be considered simultaneously, and the indirect effects carried by individual third-variables can be separated from the total effect. In this paper, we extend the definitions of third-variable effects to multilevel data structures, where multilevel additive models are adapted to model the variable relationships. And then third-variable effects can be estimated at different levels. Moreover, transformations on variables are allowed to present nonlinear relationships among variables. We compile an R package mlma, to carry out the proposed multilevel third-variable analysis. Simulations show that the proposed method can effectively differentiate and estimate third-variable effects from different levels. Further, we implement the method to explore the racial disparity in body mass index accounting for both environmental and individual level risk factors.

PubMed ID

33095796

Volume

15

Issue

10

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