Propensity Weighting in Criminology
Propensity weighting estimates the causal effect of a justice exposure — incarceration, gang membership, a program, or a sanction — from observational data when randomization was impossible. It models each unit's probability of receiving the exposure given measured confounders (the propensity score) and then weights units by the inverse of that probability, creating a pseudo-population in which the exposure is unrelated to those confounders. Rosenbaum and Rubin introduced the propensity score in 1983, and Apel and Sweeten adapted it for criminology, where ethical and practical barriers make experiments rare.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Apel, R. J., & Sweeten, G. (2010). Propensity score matching in criminology and criminal justice. In A. R. Piquero & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Handbook of Quantitative Criminology (pp. 543–562). Springer. · DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-77650-7_26
- Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70(1), 41–55. · DOI 10.1093/biomet/70.1.41
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