Sidak-type simultaneous confidence intervals for the risk measures rsmr,based on proportional mortality measures in epidemiologic 1 studies involving several competing risks of death |
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Authors: | B. Raja Rao Gary M Marsh Joan Winwood |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Biostatisfics , University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA, 15261;2. Blue Cross of Western Pennsylvania , Pittsburgh, PA, 15222 |
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Abstract: | In the present paper, simultaneous confidence interval estimates are constructed for the mortality measures RSMR. based on propor¬tional mortality measures SPMR. in epidemiologic studies for several competing risks of death to which the individuals in the study are exposed. It is demonstrated that, under a reasonable assumption, the joint sampling distribution of the statistics X. = RSMR./SPMR. for M competing risks9 may be approximated by means of a multi-variafe normal distribution, Sidak's (1967, 1968) mulfivariate normal probability inequalities are applied to construct the simultaneous confidence intervals for the measures RSMR., i=l3 2, ..., M. These are valid regardless of the covariance structure among the risks, As a particular case if the risks may be assumed as independent, our confidence intervals reduce to those for a single measure RSMR., which are narrower than those of Kupper et al., (1978), In this sense, our paper generalizes the results presently available in the literature in two directions; first, to obtain narrower confidence limits, and second3 to discuss the case of competing risks of death irrespective of their covariance structure. |
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Keywords: | Competing risks mortality measures simultaneous confidence intervals multinomical and multivarance normal distributions normal probablitity intequality |
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