Average Treatment Effect

Average Treatment Effect

The average treatment effect (ATE) is a measure used to compare treatments (or interventions) in randomized experiments, evaluation of policy interventions, and medical trials. The ATE measures the difference in mean (average) outcomes between units assigned to the treatment and units assigned to the control. In a randomized trial (i.e., an experimental study), the average treatment effect can be estimated from a sample using a comparison in mean outcomes for treated and untreated units. However, the ATE is generally understood as a causal parameter (i.e., an estimand or property of a population) that a researcher desires to know, defined without reference to the study design or estimation procedure. Both observational and experimental study designs may enable one to estimate an ATE in a variety of ways.

Read more about Average Treatment Effect:  General Definition, Formal Definition, Estimation, An Example

Famous quotes containing the words average, treatment and/or effect:

    ...you don’t have to be as good as white people, you have to be better or the best. When Negroes are average, they fail, unless they are very, very lucky. Now, if you’re average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he’d be washing dishes somewhere.
    Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)

    The treatment of the incident of the assault upon the sailors of the Baltimore is so conciliatory and friendly that I am of the opinion that there is a good prospect that the differences growing out of that serious affair can now be adjusted upon terms satisfactory to this Government by the usual methods and without special powers from Congress.
    Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)