Conducting sensitivity analysis for unmeasured confounding in observational studies using E-values: The evalue package

Abstract

In this article, we introduce the evalue package, which performs sensitivity analyses for unmeasured confounding in observational studies using the methodology proposed by VanderWeele and Ding (2017, Annals of Internal Medicine 167: 268–274). evalue reports E-values, defined as the minimum strength of association on the risk-ratio scale that an unmeasured confounder would need to have with both the treatment assignment and the outcome to fully explain away a specific treatment-outcome association, conditional on the measured covariates. evalue computes E-values for point estimates (and optionally, confidence limits) for several common outcome types, including risk and rate ratios, odds ratios with common or rare outcomes, hazard ratios with common or rare outcomes, standardized mean differences in outcomes, and risk differences.