Papers › Causal Inference in Counterbalanced Within-Subjects Designs
Causal Inference in Counterbalanced Within-Subjects Designs
Justin Ho, Jonathan Min
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
Experimental designs are fundamental for estimating causal effects. In some fields, within-subjects designs, which expose participants to both control and treatment at different time periods, are used to address practical and logistical concerns. Counterbalancing, a common technique in within-subjects designs, aims to remove carryover effects by randomizing treatment sequences. Despite its appeal, counterbalancing relies on the assumption that carryover effects are symmetric and cancel out, which is often unverifiable a priori. In this paper, we formalize the challenges of counterbalanced within-subjects designs using the potential outcomes framework. We introduce sequential exchangeability as an additional identification assumption necessary for valid causal inference in these designs. To address identification concerns, we propose diagnostic checks, the use of washout periods, and covariate adjustments, and alternative experimental designs to counterbalanced within-subjects design. Our findings demonstrate the limitations of counterbalancing and provide guidance on when and how within-subjects designs can be appropriately used for causal inference.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections