bartcs: An R Package for Bayesian Nonparametric Adjustment for Confounding

초록

This article presents an overview of the bartcs R package, which employs a Bayesian additive regression trees-based method for selecting confounders. It uses a Dirichlet distribution as a common variable selection probability prior, updating both the exposure and outcome models simultaneously while fitting tree priors for each. This data-driven method determines which variables (i.e., confounders) affect both models by assigning more posterior weight to them. It supports continuous and binary exposure variables, as well as continuous outcome variables, and is written in C++ for improved computational speed. Additionally, it can take advantage of multiple threads for parallel computing if OpenMP is available on the platform.