Post-randomization adjustment changes a treatment estimand

ID: post-randomization-adjustment-changes-a-treatment-estimand

A treatment consequence is not interchangeable with a baseline covariate in an intention-to-treat analysis. Let randomized be independent of , and let actual intervention use be , with and independent centered errors. The assignment changes the mean outcome by one. But the conditional expectation has coefficient zero on . Thus adjustment for the post-randomization variable changes the estimand even in a simple identified linear regression.

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