THE USE OF RANDOM FORESTS IN PROPENSITY SCORE WEIGHTING

dc.contributor.advisorStapleton, Lauraen_US
dc.contributor.authorZheng, Yatingen_US
dc.contributor.departmentMeasurement, Statistics and Evaluationen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-06-26T05:47:20Z
dc.date.available2024-06-26T05:47:20Z
dc.date.issued2023en_US
dc.description.abstractAn important problem of social science research is the estimate of causal effects in observationalstudies. Propensity score methods, as effective ways to remove selection bias, have been widely used in estimating causal effects in observational studies. An important step of propensity score methods is to estimate the propensity score. Recently, a machine learning method, random forests, has been proposed as an alternative to the conventional method of logistic regression to estimate the propensity score as it requires less stringent assumptions and provides less biased and more reliable estimate of the treatment effect. However, previous studies only covered limited conditions with a small number of covariates and medium sample sizes, leaving the generalizability of the results in doubt. In addition, previous studies have seldom explored how to choose the hyper-parameters in random forests in the context of propensity score methods. This dissertation, via a simulation study, aims to 1) make a more comprehensive comparison between the use of random forests and logistic regression to determine which model performs better under what conditions, 2) explore the effects of the hyperparameters on the estimate of the treatment effect in propensity score weighting. An empirical study is also used as an illustration about how to choose the hyperparameters in random forests using propensity score weighting in practical settings.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/g5bl-rpbj
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/32728
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledEducational tests & measurementsen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledStatisticsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledhyper-parametersen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpropensity score weightingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledrandom forestsen_US
dc.titleTHE USE OF RANDOM FORESTS IN PROPENSITY SCORE WEIGHTINGen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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