Donald Campbell's approach to causal inference (D. T. Campbell, 1957; W. R. Shadish, T. D. Cook, & D. T. Campbell, 2002) is widely used in psychology and education, whereas Donald Rubin's causal model (P. W. Holland, 1986; D. B. Rubin, 1974, 2005) is widely used in economics, statistics, medicine, and public health. Campbell's approach focuses on…

In Shadish (2010) and West and Thoemmes (2010), the authors contrasted 2 approaches to causality. The first originated in the psychology literature and is associated with work by Campbell (e.g., Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002), and the second has its roots in the statistics literature and is associated with work by Rubin (e.g., Rubin, 2006). In…

In this article, we note the many ontological, epistemological, and methodological similarities between how Campbell and Rubin conceptualize causation. We then explore 3 differences in their written emphases about individual case matching in observational studies. We contend that (a) Campbell places greater emphasis than Rubin on the special role…

Causal effect modeling with naturalistic rather than experimental data is challenging. In observational studies participants in different treatment conditions may also differ on pretreatment characteristics that influence outcomes. Propensity score methods can theoretically eliminate these confounds for all observed covariates, but accurate…