论文标题
单方面两部分实验的簇随机设计
Cluster Randomized Designs for One-Sided Bipartite Experiments
论文作者
论文摘要
当一个单位的结果取决于其他单位的治疗状态时,随机对照试验的结论可能会偏差。在这项工作中,我们研究了在单方面的两部分实验的情况下进行的干扰,其中实验单元 - 处理过程是随机和结果的,不直接相互作用。取而代之的是,它们的相互作用是通过它们与图形另一侧的干扰单元的连接来介导的。这种干扰的示例在市场和双面平台中很常见。群集随机设计是一种流行的方法,可以在已知图表时减轻干扰,但在单方面的两部分实验设置中尚未得到很好的研究。在这项工作中,我们为使用曝光映射框架进行干扰的自然模型进行了形式化的自然模型。我们首先展示了在该设置下,现有的集群随机设计无法在此模型下适当减轻干扰。然后,我们表明,在我们的模型下,最大程度地减少了均值估计量的偏差,从而可以通过自然解释来平衡分配聚类目标。我们进一步证明,我们的设计对具有有界干扰的线性潜在结果模型的最小值是最佳的。最后,我们通过将设计的鲁棒性提供理论和实验证据来提供各种干扰图和潜在结果模型。
The conclusions of randomized controlled trials may be biased when the outcome of one unit depends on the treatment status of other units, a problem known as interference. In this work, we study interference in the setting of one-sided bipartite experiments in which the experimental units - where treatments are randomized and outcomes are measured - do not interact directly. Instead, their interactions are mediated through their connections to interference units on the other side of the graph. Examples of this type of interference are common in marketplaces and two-sided platforms. The cluster-randomized design is a popular method to mitigate interference when the graph is known, but it has not been well-studied in the one-sided bipartite experiment setting. In this work, we formalize a natural model for interference in one-sided bipartite experiments using the exposure mapping framework. We first exhibit settings under which existing cluster-randomized designs fail to properly mitigate interference under this model. We then show that minimizing the bias of the difference-in-means estimator under our model results in a balanced partitioning clustering objective with a natural interpretation. We further prove that our design is minimax optimal over the class of linear potential outcomes models with bounded interference. We conclude by providing theoretical and experimental evidence of the robustness of our design to a variety of interference graphs and potential outcomes models.