Journal of Data Science

Abstract: Observational studies of relatively large data can have potentially hidden heterogeneity with respect to causal effects and propensity scores–patterns of a putative cause being exposed to study subjects. This underlying heterogeneity can be crucial in causal inference for any observational studies because it is systematically generated and structured by covariates which influence the cause and/or its related outcomes. Addressing the causal inference problem in view of data structure, machine learning techniques such as tree analysis can be naturally necessitated. Kang, Su, Hitsman, Liu and Lloyd-Jones (2012) proposed Marginal Tree (MT) procedure to explore both the confounding and interacting effects of the covariates on causal inference. In this paper, we extend the MT method to the case of binary responses along with a clear exposition of its relationship with established causal odds ratio. We assess the causal effect of dieting on emotional distress using both a real data set from the Lalonde’s National Supported Work Demonstration Analysis (NSW) and a simulated data set from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).