Subgroup finding via Bayesian additive regression trees

We provide a Bayesian decision theoretic approach to finding subgroups that have elevated treatment effects. Our approach separates the modeling of the response variable from the task of subgroup finding and allows a flexible modeling of the response variable irrespective of potential subgroups of interest. We use Bayesian additive regression trees to model the response variable and use a utility function defined in terms of a candidate subgroup and the predicted response for that subgroup. Subgroups are identified by maximizing the expected utility where the expectation is taken with respect to the posterior predictive distribution of the response, and the maximization is carried out over an a priori specified set of candidate subgroups. Our approach allows subgroups based on both quantitative and categorical covariates. We illustrate the approach using simulated data set study and a real data set. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.