ArticleAmerican journal of epidemiology2021
Synthetic Control Methods for the Evaluation of Single-Unit Interventions in Epidemiology: A Tutorial.
Article in American journal of epidemiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 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.
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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.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- State Point-of-Sale Comprehensive Background Check Policies and County Firearm Homicide Rates.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Considerations for the epidemiological evaluation of hyperlocal interventions: A case study of the New York City overdose prevention centers.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Effect of universal no-cost coverage on use of long-acting reversible contraception and all prescription contraception: population based, controlled, interrupted time series analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Article
- Evaluating Firearm Violence After New Jersey's Cash Bail Reform.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Effects of Community-Wide Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiatives on Local Teen Birth Rates in the United States: A Synthetic Control Approach.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2024Article
- Doubly robust proximal synthetic controls.Biometrics · 2024Article
- The augmented synthetic control method in public health and biomedical research.Statistical methods in medical research · 2024Article
- The epidemiologic case for urban health: conceptualizing and measuring the magnitude of challenges and potential benefits.F1000Research · 2024Review
- Children, vaccines, and financial incentives.International journal of health economics and management · 2023Article
- Enriching single-arm clinical trials with external controls: possibilities and pitfalls.Blood advances · 2023Article
- A comparison of quasi-experimental methods with data before and after an intervention: an introduction for epidemiologists and a simulation study.International journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- Effects of the Pelotas (Brazil) Peace Pact on violence and crime: a synthetic control analysis.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2023Article
- Impact of the Finnish Maternity Grant on infant mortality rates in the 20th century: a natural experimental study.Journal of epidemiology and community health · 2022Article
- Firearm Violence Following the Implementation of California's Gun Violence Restraining Order Law.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- RE: "SYNTHETIC CONTROL METHODS FOR THE EVALUATION OF SINGLE-UNIT INTERVENTIONS IN EPIDEMIOLOGY: A TUTORIAL".American journal of epidemiology · 2022Article
- Synthetic Control Methodology for Examining Firearm Policy.Current epidemiology reports · 2022Review
- Synthetic Control Methods for the Evaluation of Single-Unit Interventions in Epidemiology: A Tutorial.American journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Changes to ACA Individual Insurance Markets After States Leave Healthcare.gov 2016-2023.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evaluating the impacts of population-level interventions (e.g., changes to state legislation) can be challenging as conducting randomized experiments is often impractical and inappropriate, especially in settings where the intervention is implemented in a single, aggregate unit (e.g., a country or state). A common nonrandomized alternative is to compare outcomes in the treated unit(s) with unexposed controls both before and after the intervention. However, the validity of these designs depends on the use of controls that closely resemble the treated unit on before-intervention characteristics and trends on the outcome, and suitable controls may be difficult to find because the number of potential control regions is typically limited. The synthetic control method provides a potential solution to these problems by using a data-driven algorithm to identify an optimal weighted control unit-a "synthetic control"-based on data from before the intervention from available control units. While popular in the social sciences, the method has not garnered as much attention in health research, perhaps due to a lack of accessible texts aimed at health researchers. We address this gap by providing a comprehensive, nontechnical tutorial on the synthetic control method, using a worked example evaluating Florida's "stand your ground" law to illustrate methodological and practical considerations.
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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.