Defining the Study Population for an Observational Study to Ensure Sufficient Overlap: a Tree Approach
*Dylan Small, University of Pennsylvania 
Mikhail Traskin, University of Pennsylvania 

Keywords: propensity score, observational study, classification tree

The internal validity of an observational study is enhanced by only comparing sets of treated and control subjects which have sufficient overlap in their covariate distributions. Methods have been developed for defining the study population using propensity scores to ensure sufficient overlap. However, a study population defined by propensity scores is difficult for other investigators to understand. We develop a method of defining a study population in terms of a tree which is easy to understand and display that has similar internal validity as that of the study population defined by propensity scores.