Generate balance tables and plots for covariates of groups preprocessed through matching, weighting or subclassification, for example, using propensity scores. Includes integration with 'MatchIt', 'twang', 'Matching', 'optmatch', 'CBPS', and 'ebal' for assessing balance on the output of their preprocessing functions. Users can also specify data for balance assessment not generated through the above packages. Also included are methods for assessing balance in clustered or multiply imputed data sets.
Welcome to cobalt, which stands for Covariate Balance Tables (and Plots). cobalt allows users to assess balance on covariate distributions in preprocessed groups generated through weighting, matching, or subclassification, such as by using the propensity score. cobalt's primary function is bal.tab(), which stands for "balance table", and essentially repalces (or supplements) the balance assessment tool found in the R packages twang, MatchIt, CBPS, and Matching. To examine how bal.tab() integrates with these packages, see the help file for bal.tab() with ?bal.tab, which links to the methods used for each package. Each page has examples of how bal.tab() is used with the package. There is also a vignette detailing the use of all cobalt, which can be accessed with browseVignettes("cobalt").
Also included are two plotting functions, bal.plot() and love.plot(), and a utility function, f.build(). See the help files or vignette for these functions to learn what they do and how to use them.
Please remember to cite this package when using it to analyze data. For example, in a manuscript, write: "Matching was performed using Matching (Sekhon, 2011), and covariate balance was assessed using cobalt (Greifer, 2016) in R (R Core team, 2016)." Use citation("cobalt") to generate a bibliographic reference for the cobalt package. Thank you very much!