Re: Re: st: Pretreatment pair matching

[Wojciech Hardy <whardygildia@gmail.com>]

Thank you both for your answers. I've tried several approaches and
finally arrived at a set of variables containing Mahalanobis distances
between each pair from my dataset (using the mahascores program, from
the mahapick package).
I would now want STATA to find the optimal combination of pairs,
although once again I don't know how to do it. I know there are
algorithms that do this, but most of them start at the
treated/untreated level, and I don't know how to make them match from
a distance matrix provided by me.
Is there a clever way to do this with STATA?

Thanks indeed,
Wojciech Hardy

2012/9/21 Ariel Linden, DrPH <ariel.linden@gmail.com>:
> Another approach you might consider is using coarsened exact matching,
> -cem-, a user written program found on SSC (ssc install cem)
>
> Using -cem-, you would omit the treatment() option, which would cause the
> program to sort the observations into strata without matching criteria.
>
> See section 5.6 "Blocking in Randomized Experiments" in:
>
> Iacus, Stefano M., Gary King, and Giuseppe Porro. "Causal Inference Without
> Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching." Political Analysis (2011).
> http://gking.harvard.edu/files/political_analysis-2011-iacus-pan_mpr013.pdf
>
> Ariel
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:46:28 -0400
> From: Austin Nichols <austinnichols@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: st: Pretreatment pair matching
>
> Wojciech Hardy <whardygildia@gmail.com>:
> What variables do you want to match on to make pairs?
> If they are all categorical and a relatively small number, you might simply
>  egen class=group(x*)
> and randomize within class, or:
>  bys x*: g pair_id=ceil((_n-mod(_n-1,2))/2)
>  g u=uniform()
>  bys x* pair_id (u): g treatment=_n==1
> or somesuch.
>
> With some continuous variables, you may prefer to construct a
> Mahalanobis distance from group means, and then sort by that distance
> within group before assigning a pair id. See also -help cluster- and
> the related manual entries.
>
> You might also want to read "The Essential Role of Pair Matching in
> Cluster-Randomized Experiments, with Application to the Mexican
> Universal Health Insurance Evaluation" by Kosuke Imai, Gary King and
> Clayton Nall (2009):
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.3752%22%20/
>
> On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 6:44 AM, Wojciech Hardy <whardygildia@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> I'm trying to conduct a pair matching procedure only without having
>> the treatment group and control group set beforehand.
>>
>> In fact we intend to use the pair matching to help us decide which
>> items should go to the treatment group (i.e. we'd like to find
>> 'twins', and then put one of them into the treatment group, and the
>> keep other one in the control group, thus increasing the efficiency of
>> later statystical analysis).
>>
>> I've found some commands allowing for measuring the treatment effect,
>> by comparing twins, but these do not apply to my case and
>> unfortunately I don't have the skills to modify the commands to give
>> me what I need.
>>
>> What I'd want is to match the observations into pairs (generate some
>> "pair ID" probably), based on specified variables, without doing
>> anything else.
>>
>> I thought of solving this by duplicating the dataset, giving the new
>> copy a "1" value in a treatment variable, and making the already
>> created commands match between the two identical groups. I'd have to
>> make it not match the observations with the same ID however (i.e. with
>> their own copies), and I don't know how to do it. Also, I'm not sure
>> if these commands report what pairs they've made in the process.
>>
>> I haven't found any solution to this on the net, so I'll be really
>> grateful for any help!
>
>
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