ISCB Course w/ Els Goetghebeur & Bianca De Stavola

Czech National Group of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics, in cooperation with the Institute of Computer Science AS CR in Prague, and, Faculty of Mathematics & Physics of the Charles University in Prague

are delighted to invite you to attend

a One-day ISCB course on

„Causal questions and principled answers: a guide through the landscape for practicing statisticians“

presented by

Els Goetghebeur¹ and Bianca De Stavola²

¹Ghent University, Belgium

²University College London, UK

Bianca De Stavola Biography

Bianca De Stavola is a Professor of Medical Statistics at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London, UK. She recently joined UCL after 23 years at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she was a co-Director of the Centre for Statistical Methodology. Bianca received her PhD from Imperial College London and MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, after graduating in Statistical and Economic Sciences at Padua University. Her main research activities involve the understanding, development and implementation of statistical methods for long-term longitudinal studies, with specific applications to life-course epidemiology.  As these often involve causal enquiries, mediation analysis is a main focus of interest and of several collaborations.

Els Goetghebeur Biography

Els Goetghebeur is a Professor of Statistics, Ghent University, Belgium. She holds a mathematics degree from KU Leuven and obtained a PhD in statistics from Hasselt University, Belgium. Through her first position at the London LSHTM (1990-1993) and later at the Harvard School of Public Health she became interested in clinical trials, public health, viruses (HIV) and quality of care, amongst other applications of biostatistics. Her main methodological interests relate to survival analysis and causal inference. Today, she leads a consulting lab at Ghent University and co-coordinates FLAMES (FLAnders’ training network in MEthodology and Statistics). She is Editor of Statistics in Medicine and spends 20% of her time at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden (corona permitting), with a focus on methodology for studies based on disease registers. She is a member of the steering group of the international STRATOS initiative.

WHERE:

Because of the actual epidemic sitation in Europe and worldwide, the course will proceed virtually on the ZOOM platform.

Registered course participants will obtain ZOOM login details on TUE 3 NOV 2020.

Course material (slides) will be made available to registered course participants at about the same time, i.e. on TUE 3 NOV 2020.

WHEN

THE REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.

6 November 2020 (Friday), 9:00 AM through 4:30 PM Central European Standard Time (CEST), i.e. a winter time. The time shift to a standard (winter) time will be applied on 25 OCT 2020 at 3 am, the clock will shift back 1 hour to 2 am.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE

26 October 2020 (Monday)

Note: Payment has to be received by this date. Please, consult below an important information regarding the registration procedure.

COURSE ABSTRACT

This course aims to support the practicing statistician in making it work: causal inference from observational data in a potential outcomes framework. How to chose among the many versions of exposure, the target population and indeed the estimand in a given setting? Different estimands serve different purposes while lending themselves (in)directly to natural constraints imposed on given datasets.

• We spend time exploring this in various contexts before explaining key features of estimation methods relying on either the `no unmeasured confounders’ assumption or the availability of “instrumental variables”.

• We review, apply and compare dedicated methods centered around outcome regression and stratification, inverse probability weighting and their double robust version, when relying on the no unmeasured confounders assumption.

• We also discuss the value of two-stage-least-squares estimation when exploiting an instrumental variable.

• We illustrate key results and estimation properties with published case studies, using either the original data or derived simulations. Hands on sessions will guide participants in using R or Stata with the data.

The course assumes familiarity with regression. Participants should bring a laptop with a fully charged battery. Materials including datasets and a list of packages that should be downloaded and installed prior to the course will be made available.

COURSE INSTRUCTORS

The Causal Inference Topic Group of the STRATOS (STRengthening Analytical Thinking for Observational Studies) Initiative, including Els Goetghebeur (Ghent University, Belgium) and Bianca De Stavola (University College London, UK); see www.ofcaus.org.

The course instructors are part of the STRengthening Analytical Thinking for Observational Studies (STRATOS) initiative, which is a large collaboration of experts in many different areas of biostatistical research. More information can be found on www.ofcaus.org.

COURSE SCHEDULE

• ZOOM REGISTRATION

  • 8:30 - 9:00 Registration and entry of participants to the ZOOM platform

• SESSION 1

  • 9:00 - 9:20 Introduction to the course and participants

  • 9:20 - 10:10 Causal estimands for point exposures and beyond

  • 10:15 - 10:45 Practical

• BREAK

  • 10:45 - 11:00 Coffee break

• SESSION 2

  • 11:00 - 11:45 Estimation and inference under no unmeasured confounding: outcome regression, matching and stratification

  • 11:45 - 12:30 Practical

• LUNCH

  • 12:30 - 13:00 Lunch break

• SESSION 3

  • 13:00 - 14:00 Inverse probability weighting and doubly robust estimation

  • 14:00 - 14:35 Practical

• BREAK

  • 14:35 - 14:50 Coffee break

• SESSION 4

  • 14:50 - 15:35 Instrumental variables

  • 15:35 - 16:15 Practical

  • 16:15 - 16:30 Summarising remarks

REGISTRATION RATES

Early Bird (until 31 July 2020)

ISCB student member* 1 500 CZK (60 EUR)

ISCB regular member* 2 000 CZK (80 EUR)

Non-ISCB member – academia 4 000 CZK (160 EUR)

Non-ISCB member – business 10 000 CZK (400 EUR)

Regular (1 Aug – 26 October 2020)

ISCB student member* 2 000 CZK (80 EUR)

ISCB regular member* 2 500 CZK (100 EUR)

Non-ISCB member – academia 5 250 CZK (210 EUR)

Non-ISCB member – business 13 250 CZK (530 EUR)

(*) Note: ISCB membership is required for 2019 and 2020

Payments by bank transfer ONLY

(All international payments have to be made in EUR)

ACCOUNT INFORMATION

For all domestic (CZK) and international transfers (EUR):

Bank's name and address Fio banka, a.s., V Celnici 1028/10, Praha 1, Czech Republic

Account owner Mezinárodní společnost pro klinickou biostatistiku v České republice, z.s.

Account number 2100009829 / 2010

IBAN CZ3820100000002100009829

BIC code/SWIFT FIOBCZPPXXX

Important!!: Before you make a payment, please, e-mail an inquiry to the Course Secretary Ms. Lenka Semeráková for confirmation. The number of course participants is limited to 30. Should the course reach its capacity, a notification will be placed here.

For institutions making payments on behalf of their employees: The payment identification number (variabilní symbol) is 20201106.

Please, remember to state the name of an employee on whose behalf the payment is made in the comment for the payment recipient (poznámka pro příjemce).

CANCELLATION INFORMATION

Cancellation fees apply as explained below:

• before 1 October 2020: 10 EUR

• 1 through 26 October 2020: 40 EUR

• after 26 October 2020: full paid amount

COURSE VENUE

Institute of Computer Science, Czech Academy of Sciences, Pod Vodarenskou vezi 2, 182 07 Prague, Czech Republic

COURSE SECRETARY

Ms. Lenka Semeráková, Institute of Computer Science, Czech Academy of Sciences, tel. +420 266 053 640, e-mail: semerakova@cs.cas.cz