ArticleEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2020
Impact of Regression to the Mean on the Synthetic Control Method: Bias and Sensitivity Analysis.
Article in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Impact of a National Stepped-Care Model of Opioid Use Disorder Treatment on Access to Medication Therapies Among Homeless-Experienced Veterans.Health services research · 2026Article
- Free buses: Citywide zero fare is associated with increased use of public transit.Transport policy · 2026Article
- Evaluation of Federally Mandated Smoke-Free Housing Policy and Health Outcomes Among Adults Over the Age of 50 in Low-Income, Public Housing in New York City, 2015-2022.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2025Article
- The effect of a nighttime curfew on the spread of COVID-19.Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2023Article
- Dealing with confounding in observational studies: A scoping review of methods evaluated in simulation studies with single-point exposure.Statistics in medicine · 2023Article
- Controlling for Differential Regression-To-The-Mean via Propensity Scores: A Simulation Study.Clinical epidemiology · 2023Article
- Synthetic Control Methods for the Evaluation of Single-Unit Interventions in Epidemiology: A Tutorial.American journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
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
Abstract
To make informed policy recommendations from observational panel data, researchers must consider the effects of confounding and temporal variability in outcome variables. Difference-in-difference methods allow for estimation of treatment effects under the parallel trends assumption. To justify this assumption, methods for matching based on covariates, outcome levels, and outcome trends-such as the synthetic control approach-have been proposed. While these tools can reduce bias and variability in some settings, we show that certain applications can introduce regression to the mean (RTM) bias into estimates of the treatment effect. Through simulations, we show RTM bias can lead to inflated type I error rates and bias toward the null in typical policy evaluation settings. We develop a novel correction for RTM bias that allows for valid inference and show how this correction can be used in a sensitivity analysis. We apply our proposed sensitivity analysis to reanalyze data concerning the effects of California's Proposition 99, a large-scale tobacco control program, on statewide smoking rates.
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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.