Hi Joseph, thanks for your comment! It might have been a misunderstanding but we’re definitely not claiming the top panel of Figure 4 is causal. It might have been because I cut out parts of our result section from the full report to make the EA Forum post shorter, but we discuss that the top part is cross-sectional as you say, and the bottom panel of Figure 4 (with difference scores) is more causal evidence.
Thanks. I think the issue is the use of the word effect, which usually implies causality in my field (Economics), rather than association when referring to the cross-sectional analysis alongside the fact that context was lost when it was edited down for the forum.
Hi Joseph, thanks for your comment! It might have been a misunderstanding but we’re definitely not claiming the top panel of Figure 4 is causal. It might have been because I cut out parts of our result section from the full report to make the EA Forum post shorter, but we discuss that the top part is cross-sectional as you say, and the bottom panel of Figure 4 (with difference scores) is more causal evidence.
Thanks. I think the issue is the use of the word effect, which usually implies causality in my field (Economics), rather than association when referring to the cross-sectional analysis alongside the fact that context was lost when it was edited down for the forum.