We analyze the wage effects of employment breaks of women entering motherhood using a novel within-firm matching approach where mothers’ wages upon return to the job are compared with those of their female colleagues. We investigate three different matching procedures: (1) exact matching on individual characteristics two years before birth, (2) propensity score matching and (3) a combined proce...

OBJECTIVE To provide a tutorial for using propensity score methods with complex survey data. DATA SOURCES Simulated data and the 2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. STUDY DESIGN Using simulation, we compared the following methods for estimating the treatment effect: a naïve estimate (ignoring both survey weights and propensity scores), survey weighting, propensity score methods (nearest ...

Adjusting for a balancing score is sufficient for bias reduction when estimating causal effects including the average treatment effect and effect among the treated. Estimators that adjust for the propensity score in a nonparametric way, such as matching on an estimate of the propensity score, can be consistent when the estimated propensity score is not consistent for the true propensity score b...

This study used the propensity score method to investigate the effects of early adolescent romance in the 9th grade on academic performance, as measured by high school graduation and college enrollment. The study sample included 2,895 9th graders from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997. Findings from the study uncovered mixed effects of early adolescent romance on student performanc...

The main advantage of the randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the random assignment of treatment that prevents selection by prognosis. Nevertheless, only few RCTs can be performed given their high cost and the difficulties in conducting such studies. Therefore, several analytical methods for removing the effects of selection bias in observational studies have been proposed. The first aim of th...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether an approach that assesses patient capabilities for self-management and then tailors coaching support based on this assessment would be more effective in improving outcomes than the usual disease management approach. STUDY DESIGN A quasi-experimental pre-post design was used, with an intervention group coached with a tailored approach and a control group coached ...

OBJECTIVES To develop a propensity score-based risk adjustment method to estimate the performance of 20 physician groups and to compare performance rankings using our method to a standard hierarchical regression-based risk adjustment method. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING Mailed survey of patients from 20 California physician groups between July 1998 and February 1999. STUDY DESIGN A cross-sect...

Teachers and instructors assign students homework of varying lengths. There is considerable evidence that factors such as cognitive load play a role in student performance and learning, but there has not been sufficient study of how these phenomena play out in the specific case of the length of homework. In this paper, we study the impact of assignment size on student performance. This paper re...

This study seeks to address the mixed findings of prior studies regarding the effect of online brand community on customer value. Based on the regulatory focus theory, we hypothesize that participation in a brand community tend to increase both visit and purchase frequencies of customers with promotion-focus; on the contrary, the same would typically decrease visit and purchase frequencies of c...