A General Approach for Assessing Sensitivity to Violations of Causal Assumptions

Abstract

Although causal sensitivity analyses are widely used to assess the robustness of conclusions, a key limitation is that existing methods are typically developed for specific designs. This paper develops a general sensitivity analysis framework that applies to a wide range of discrete causal models and estimands by deriving sharp bounds on causal estimands as a function of the maximum proportion of the population for which the assumption is relaxed. The framework is built on the generalized principal strata approach, which allows the translation of assumptions, estimands, and data into polynomial programs. In this approach, three classes of assumptions can be relaxed: a) functional restrictions, which limit the ways that one variable can respond to another, e.g. strong monotonicity; b) exclusion restrictions, which rule out direct causal effects; c) unconfoundedness, which rules out unobserved common causes of variables. The approach produces both sharp sensitivity curves and robustness values, i.e., the smallest sensitivity level at which the sign of a causal effect stops being identified. The applicability of the method is demonstrated by generalizing existing proportion-of-violations approaches, deriving new sensitivity analysis methods for instrumental variable and selection-on-observables designs, and reanalyzing empirical results.