Table 3.

Covariable balance diagnostics: Before and after IPW

	Standardized difference†
Characteristic	Pre‐IPW	IPW via LR	IPW via NN	IPW via RF
Age	1.059	0.276	1.060	0.167
Gender	0.155	0.198	0.155	0.055
Residency region	1.108	0.106	1.109	0.381
Comorbidity	0.062	0.231	0.063	0.463
Smoking history	0.511	0.031	0.511	0.169
Subtypes of stage IIIb	0.239	0.240	0.238	0.089
Use of PET	0.006	0.317	0.007	0.031

^† Rounded.

IPW, inverse probability weighting; LR, logistic regression; NN, neural network; PET, positron emission tomography; RF, random forest.