PONE-D-23-04363Performance of modeling and balancing approach methods when using weights to estimate treatment effects in observational time-to-event settingsPLOS ONE

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The authors are requested to make appropriate modifications to this paper as suggested by all reviewers.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper is good. The presentation of the article is also good. The manuscript is technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions. The statistical analysis has been performed appropriately and rigorously. The authors have made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available. The manuscript is not presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English.

Reviewer #2: This paper investigates the finite sample properties of different weighting methods when these are used to estimate population level treatment effects using survival data. It is a little research point, however I have some comments to improve the overall look of the paper: the authors should

Review the paper in general linguistically

Adding recent studies that dealt with the same point

Modify the abstract to clarify the purpose of the study, its importance, and the most important findings of their study.

Rewrite the discussion section because it is poor, and clarify the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Explain the reason for preferring one over the other in light of the discussion of previous studies and research.

Reviewer #3: This article compares the modelling vs balancing approach to estimate weights for weighted causal effect estimators of binary exposures and time-to-event outcomes. The article contains sufficient details in the description of the methods, provides a comprehensive simulation study and applies several methods to a real data application. The article is also well written. I only have one major comment, and a few minor comments.

Major comment

1. The sum of the balancing weights is set to 1. In contrast, for estimating the ATT, the sum of the weights based on the propensity score for the control patients will tend to n1, the sample size of the treated patients. This discrepancy would seem to make the comparison between the balancing and modelling approach unfair, as the scaling factor for the weights has an impact on the estimation of the marginal causal hazard ratio in the treated patients. Please set the sum of the balancing weights to be equal to n1 when estimating the ATT.

Minor comments

1. It is worth clarifying on page 8 that the use of the robust variance estimator for estimating the ATT characterized by the marginal hazard ratio was found to lead to conservative inference in simulations only, and that no theoretical justification has been provided. For instance the following article shows that the robust variance estimator can also lead to anti-conservative inference “On Variance of the Treatment Effect in the Treated When Estimated by Inverse Probability Weighting”

2. On page 5, it is worth clarifying that entropy balancing is double robust with respect to a linear outcome regression model and logistic propensity score model. The current setting assumes a log-linear regression model for the hazard, and therefore does not fall in the same setting.

3. It is worth mentioning in the discussion that the overlap weights can also be used as an approach to create exact balance if the user is willing to change the target population to one where there is high overlap in the covariate distributions.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Suzan Abdel-Rahman

Reviewer #3: No

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Performance of modeling and balancing approach methods when using weights to estimate treatment effects in observational time-to-event settings

PONE-D-23-04363R1

Dear Dr. Wang de Faria Barros,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Mohamed R. Abonazel, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper is good. The presentation of it is also good. As well as the topic is interesting. I recommend accepting it.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr. Issam Dawoud

Reviewer #3: No

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