ReviewCurrent epidemiology reports
Regression Discontinuity for Causal Effect Estimation in Epidemiology.
Review in Current epidemiology reports. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
- Regression Discontinuity and Randomized Controlled Trial Estimates: An Application to The Mycotic Ulcer Treatment Trials.Ophthalmic epidemiology · 2018Trial
- Postpartum continuity of care for women with HIV: Option B+ policy impact and limitations in South Africa.BMJ global health · 2026Article
- Variation in effectiveness of blood transfusion by hospital day: A multicenter retrospective study.Journal of hospital medicine · 2026Article
- Association of affirmative action with health and education outcomes and services in India.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Effect of COVID-19 vaccination appointment letters on uptake by sociodemographic characteristics: a regression discontinuity analysis in Sweden, December 2020 to September 2021.European journal of public health · 2025Article
- Article
- Does home-based screening improve hypertension diagnosis, treatment and control? A regression discontinuity analysis in urban India.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- A systematic approach to evaluating instrumental variable assumptions: applied example of glucose-lowering medications and risk for hospitalized heart failure in older adults.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Comparison of thrombectomy alone versus bridging thrombolysis in a US population using regression discontinuity analysis.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- COVID-19 Incidence and Age Eligibility for Elementary School.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Healthcare burden changes by restricted physical activities in lumbar spinal stenosis and spondylolisthesis: a retrospective large cohort study during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2024Article
- Opportunities and challenges in using instrumental variables to study causal effects in nonrandomized stress and trauma research.Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · 2023Review
- Dealing with confounding in observational studies: A scoping review of methods evaluated in simulation studies with single-point exposure.Statistics in medicine · 2023Article
- Relative age in the school year and risk of mental health problems in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Article
- The impact of vocational rehabilitation on employment outcomes: A regression discontinuity approach.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2022Article
- Red Blood Cell Transfusion at a Hemoglobin Threshold of 7 g/dl in Critically Ill Patients: A Regression Discontinuity Study.Annals of the American Thoracic Society · 2022Article
- Epidemiology beyond its limits.Science advances · 2022Article
- Rural-Urban Differences in Maternal Mortality Trends in the United States, 1999-2017: Accounting for the Impact of the Pregnancy Status Checkbox.American journal of epidemiology · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Regression discontinuity analyses can generate estimates of the causal effects of an exposure when a continuously measured variable is used to assign the exposure to individuals based on a threshold rule. Individuals just above the threshold are expected to be similar in their distribution of measured and unmeasured baseline covariates to individuals just below the threshold, resulting in exchangeability. At the threshold exchangeability is guaranteed if there is random variation in the continuous assignment variable, e.g., due to random measurement error. Under exchangeability, causal effects can be identified at the threshold. The regression discontinuity intention-to-treat (RD-ITT) effect on an outcome can be estimated as the difference in the outcome between individuals just above (or below) versus just below (or above) the threshold. This effect is analogous to the ITT effect in a randomized controlled trial. Instrumental variable methods can be used to estimate the effect of exposure itself utilizing the threshold as the instrument. We review the recent epidemiologic literature reporting regression discontinuity studies and find that while regression discontinuity designs are beginning to be utilized in a variety of applications in epidemiology, they are still relatively rare, and analytic and reporting practices vary. Regression discontinuity has the potential to greatly contribute to the evidence base in epidemiology, in particular on the real-life and long-term effects and side-effects of medical treatments that are provided based on threshold rules - such as treatments for low birth weight, hypertension or diabetes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.