Toolkit for Weighting and Analysis of Nonequivalent Groups

A Tutorial on the TWANG Shiny Application for Three or More Treatment Groups

by Beth Ann Griffin, Chuck Story, Ricardo Sanchez, Matthew Cefalu, Daniel F. McCaffrey

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This tutorial describes how to use a menu-driven Shiny application (app) based on the Toolkit for Weighting and Analysis of Nonequivalent Groups (TWANG) R package. The TWANG package was first developed in 2004 by RAND Corporation researchers for the R statistical computing language and environment. The Shiny software development package allowed the TWANG project team to develop a menu-driven app that can be used to perform analyses using the TWANG package's suite of commands without requiring a user to learn R. This tutorial provides an introduction about how to use the TWANG Shiny app to estimate propensity score weights and related treatment effects for comparing three or more treatment groups when using observational data. The tutorial demonstrates use of the Shiny app through an illustrative example and explains key inputs and outputs of the TWANG Shiny app.

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Table of Contents

  • Chapter One

    Introduction

  • Chapter Two

    Setting Up

  • Chapter Three

    Estimating Propensity Scores

  • Chapter Four

    Evaluating the Quality of the PSWs

  • Chapter Five

    Analysis of Outcomes

  • Chapter Six

    Data Outputs

  • Chapter Seven

    Changes When Running an ATT Example

  • Chapter Eight

    Summary

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This research was prepared for the National Institute on Drug Abuse and conducted by the Justice Policy Program within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being.

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