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Directed Acyclic Graphs

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Book cover Handbook of Epidemiology

Abstract

A directed acyclic graph (DAG) can be thought of as a kind of flowchart that visualizes a whole causal etiological network, linking causes and effects. In epidemiology, the terms causal graph, causal diagram, and DAG are used as synonyms (Greenland et al. 1999). DAGs are considered to be of use for embedding causality in a formal causal framework (Hernán and Robins 2006; Robins 2001; Hernán et al. 2004). In probability theory, there is a somewhat different understanding of DAGs, which we will discuss later. This chapter aims to demonstrate how DAGs can help to formalize the search for answers to different research questions in epidemiology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biometry and Data Management, Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS, Achterstr. 30, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Ronja Foraita, Jacob Spallek & Hajo Zeeb

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  1. Ronja Foraita
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  2. Jacob Spallek
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  1. Department of Epidemiological Methods and Etiologic Research, Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS, Bremen, Germany

    Wolfgang Ahrens

  2. Department of Biometry and Data Management, Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS, Bremen, Germany

    Iris Pigeot

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Foraita, R., Spallek, J., Zeeb, H. (2014). Directed Acyclic Graphs. In: Ahrens, W., Pigeot, I. (eds) Handbook of Epidemiology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09834-0_65

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09834-0_65

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