ERIC Number: EJ1432208
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2056-7936
Recurrent Individual Treatment Assignment: A Treatment Policy Approach to Account for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects
Ilja Cornelisz; Chris van Klaveren
npj Science of Learning, v7 Article 3 2022
Longitudinal randomized controlled trials generally assign individuals randomly to interventions at baseline and then evaluate how differential average treatment effects evolve over time. This study shows that longitudinal settings could benefit from "Recurrent Individual Treatment Assignment" ("RITA") instead, particularly in the face of (dynamic) heterogeneous treatment effects. Focusing on the optimization of treatment assignment, rather than on estimating treatment effects, acknowledges the presence of unobserved heterogeneous treatment effects and improves overall intervention response when compared to intervention policies in longitudinal settings based on "Randomized Controlled Trials" ("RCTs")-derived average treatment effects. This study develops a "RITA"-algorithm and evaluates its performance in a multi-period simulation setting, considering two alternative interventions and varying the extent of unobserved heterogeneity in individual treatment response. The results show that "RITA" learns quickly, and adapts individual assignments effectively. If treatment heterogeneity exists, the inherent focus on both exploit and explore enables "RITA" to outperform a conventional assignment strategy that relies on "RCT"-derived average treatment effects.
Descriptors: Longitudinal Studies, Randomized Controlled Trials, Intervention, Assignments, Algorithms, Simulation, Decision Making, Responses
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A