Causal Mediation Analysis in Multisite Trials

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

The major goal of my dissertation work is to develop a conceptual framework and a statistical tool for investigating, in a multisite randomized trial, the population average and the between-site variation of the causal mediation mechanisms through which educational programs produce their intended effects. The dissertation is composed of three studies. The first study develops a weighting method for assessing between-site heterogeneity in causal mediation mechanism. The second study further develops the method to enhance external and internal validity in the presence of complex sample and survey designs and non-random attrition. While the first two studies focus on one single mediator, I extend the method to be applicable to two concurrent mediators in the third study. In each study, I apply the method to a re-analysis of the National Job Corps Study data. In my poster presentation, I will focus on the third study, which is built upon the method developed in the first study and refined in the second study.

Author

• Xu Qin, University of Chicago