Methods of Causal Inference in Physics Education Research.

Educational policies require sound estimates of their potential effects. Methods for making such estimates, i.e. finding causal estimands, have made great progress in the last few decades. Three recent papers in Physical Review Physics Education Research present explicit methods of causal inference but unfortunately the methods have major errors. Identifying causal mediation, choosing variables to control for, and imputation of missing data are among the topics for which incorrect methods were given.