A class of mean residual life regression models with censored survival data

When describing a failure time distribution, the mean residual life is sometimes preferred to the survival or hazard rate. Regression analysis making use of the mean residual life function has recently drawn a great deal of attention. In this paper, a class of mean residual life regression models are proposed for censored data, and estimation procedures and a goodness-of-fit test are developed. Both asymptotic and finite sample properties of the proposed estimators are established, and the proposed methods are applied to a cancer data set from a clinic trial.     

A family of IDMRL tests with unknown turning point

In this paper we propose a family of tests for exponentiality against the IDMRL alternative. Here we assume that the turning point or the proportion before the turning point is unknown. We derive the asymptotic null distributions of the test statistics and obtain their asymptotic critical values based on Durbin's approximation method. A simulation study is conducted to evaluate the proposed tests.     

Nonparametric estimation of the conditional mean residual life function with censored data

The conditional mean residual life (MRL) function is the expected remaining lifetime of a system given survival past a particular time point and the values of a set of predictor variables. This function is a valuable tool in reliability and actuarial studies when the right tail of the distribution is of interest, and can be more informative than the survivor function. In this paper, we identify theoretical limitations of some semi-parametric conditional MRL models, and propose two nonparametric methods of estimating the conditional MRL function. Asymptotic properties such as consistency and normality of our proposed estimators are established. We investigate via simulation study the empirical properties of the proposed estimators, including bootstrap pointwise confidence intervals. Using Monte Carlo simulations we compare the proposed nonparametric estimators to two popular semi-parametric methods of analysis, for varying types of data. The proposed estimators are demonstrated on the Veteran’s Administration lung cancer trial.     

Estimating the mean life time using right censored data

Estimation of the population mean based on right censored observations is considered. The naive sample mean will be an inconsistent and asymptotically biased estimator in this case. An estimate suggested in textbooks is to compute the area under a Kaplan–Meier curve. In this note, two more seemingly different approaches are introduced. Students’ reaction to these approaches was very positive in an introductory survival analysis course the author recently taught.     

Empirical likelihood ratio test for a mean change point model with a linear trend followed by an abrupt change

In this paper, a change point model with the mean being constant up to some unknown point, and increasing linearly to another unknown point, then dropping back to the original level is studied. A nonparametric method based on the empirical likelihood test is proposed to detect and estimate the locations of change points. Under some mild conditions, the asymptotic null distribution of an empirical likelihood ratio test statistic is shown to have the extreme distribution. The consistency of the test is also proved. Simulations of the powers of the test indicate that it performs well under different assumptions of the data distribution. The test is applied to the aircraft arrival time data set and the Stanford heart transplant data set.     

Empirical likelihood based detection procedure for change point in mean residual life functions under random censorship

The mean residual life (MRL) function is one of the basic parameters of interest in survival analysis that describes the expected remaining time of an individual after a certain age. The study of changes in the MRL function is practical and interesting because it may help us to identify some factors such as age and gender that may influence the remaining lifetimes of patients after receiving a certain surgery. In this paper, we propose a detection procedure based on the empirical likelihood for the changes in MRL functions with right censored data. Two real examples are also given: Veterans' administration lung cancer study and Stanford heart transplant to illustrate the detecting procedure. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On a goodness-of-fit test for normality with unknown parameters and type-II censored data

We propose a new goodness-of-fit test for normal and lognormal distributions with unknown parameters and type-II censored data. This test is a generalization of Michael's test for censored samples, which is based on the empirical distribution and a variance stabilizing transformation. We estimate the parameters of the model by using maximum likelihood and Gupta's methods. The quantiles of the distribution of the test statistic under the null hypothesis are obtained through Monte Carlo simulations. The power of the proposed test is estimated and compared to that of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test also using simulations. The new test is more powerful than the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test in most of the studied cases. Acceptance regions for the PP, QQ and Michael's stabilized probability plots are derived, making it possible to visualize which data contribute to the decision of rejecting the null hypothesis. Finally, an illustrative example is presented.     

Jackknife empirical likelihood test for mean residual life functions

Mean residual life (MRL) function is an important function in survival analysis which describes the expected remaining life given survival to a certain age. In this article, we propose a non parametric method based on jackknife empirical likelihood through a U-statistic to test the equality of two mean residual functions. The asymptotic distribution of the test statistic has been derived. Simulations are conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed test under different distributional assumptions and compare with some existing method. The proposed method is then applied to two real datasets.     

Power-transformed linear regression on quantile residual life for censored competing risks data

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a power-transformed linear quantile regression model for the residual lifetime of competing risks data. The proposed model can describe the association between any quantile of a time-to-event distribution among survivors beyond a specific time point and the covariates. Under covariate-dependent censoring, we develop an estimation procedure with two steps, including an unbiased monotone estimating equation for regression parameters and cumulative sum processes for the Box–Cox transformation parameter. The asymptotic properties of the estimators are also derived. We employ an efficient bootstrap method for the estimation of the variance–covariance matrix. The finite-sample performance of the proposed approaches are evaluated through simulation studies and a real example.     

A modified chi-square test for Bertholon model with censored data

In this work, we propose the construction of a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test in censored data case, for Bertholon model which can analyse various competing risks of failure or death. This test is based on a modification of the Nikulin-Rao-Robson (NRR) statistic proposed by Bagdonavicius and Nikulin (2011a Bagdonavicius, V., Nikulin, M. (2011a). Chi-squared tests for general composite hypotheses from censored samples. Comptes Rendus Mathématiques: Series I 349(3–4):219–223. [Google Scholar], 2011b Bagdonavicius, V., Nikulin, M. (2011b). Chi-squared goodness-of-fit test for right censored data. International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 24:30–50. [Google Scholar]) for censored data. We applied this test to numerical examples from simulated samples and real data.     

Optimal bivariate step-stress accelerated life test for Type-I hybrid censored data

This paper presents a step-stress accelerated life test for two stress variables to obtain optimal hold times under a Type-I hybrid censoring scheme. An exponentially distributed life and a cumulative exposure model are assumed. The maximum-likelihood estimates are given, from which the asymptotic variance and the Fisher information matrix are obtained. The optimal test plan is determined for each combination of stress levels by minimizing the asymptotic variance of reliability estimate at a typical operating condition. Finally, simulation results are discussed to illustrate the proposed criteria. Simulation results show that the proposed optimum plan is robust, and the initial estimates have a small effect on optimal values.     

Nonparametric inference on mean residual life function with length-biased right-censored data

Abstract

In survival or reliability studies, the mean residual life (MRL) function is an important characteristic in understanding the survival or ageing process. In this article, we consider the problem of nonparametric MRL function estimation with length-biased right-censored data. Two nonparametric estimators of the MRL are proposed and their weak convergence is presented. In order to evaluate the performance of these estimators, small Monte Carlo simulations are carried out. Results show that the proposed estimators work well especially when the sample size is small and their calculations are simple. Finally, a real data example is provided.     

A new test for decreasing mean residual lifetimes

The mean residual life of a non negative random variable X with a finite mean is defined by M(t) = E[X ? t|X > t] for t ? 0. One model of aging is the decreasing mean residual life (DMRL): M is decreasing (non increasing) in time. It vastly generalizes the more stringent model of increasing failure rate (IFR). The exponential distribution lies at the boundary of both of these classes. There is a large literature on testing exponentiality against DMRL alternatives which are all of the integral type. Because most parametric families of DMRL distributions are IFR, their relative merits have been compared only at some IFR alternatives. We introduce a new Kolmogorov–Smirnov type sup-test and derive its asymptotic properties. We compare the powers of this test with some integral tests by simulations using a class of DMRL, but not IFR alternatives, as well as some popular IFR alternatives. The results show that the sup-test is much more powerful than the integral tests in all cases.     

A general quantile residual life model for length‐biased right‐censored data

The quantile residual lifetime function provides comprehensive quantitative measures for residual life, especially when the distribution of the latter is skewed or heavy‐tailed and/or when the data contain outliers. In this paper, we propose a general class of semiparametric quantile residual life models for length‐biased right‐censored data. We use the inverse probability weighted method to correct the bias due to length‐biased sampling and informative censoring. Two estimating equations corresponding to the quantile regressions are constructed in two separate steps to obtain an efficient estimator. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator are established. The main difficulty in implementing our proposed method is that the estimating equations associated with the quantiles are nondifferentiable, and we apply the majorize–minimize algorithm and estimate the asymptotic covariance using an efficient resampling method. We use simulation studies to evaluate the proposed method and illustrate its application by a real‐data example.     

Small sample study on estimators of life distributions and of mean survival times using randomly censored data

Whereas large-sample properties of the estimators of survival distributions using censored data have been studied by many authors, exact results for small samples have been difficult to obtain. In this paper we obtain the exact expression for the ath moment (a > 0) of the Bayes estimator of survival distribution using the censored data under proportional hazard model. Using the exact expression we compute the exact mean, variance and MSE of the Bayes estimator. Also two estimators ofthe mean survival time based on the Kaplan-Meier estimator and the Bayes estimator are compared for small samples under proportional hazards.     

The two-sample problem with multivariate censored data: a new rank test family

A new rank test family is proposed to test the equality of two multivariate failure times distributions with censored observations. The tests are very simple: they are based on a transformation of the multivariate rank vectors to a univariate rank score and the resulting statistics belong to the familiar class of the weighted logrank test statistics. The new procedure is also applicable to multivariate observations in general, such as repeated measures, some of which may be missing. To investigate the performance of the proposed tests, a simulation study was conducted with bivariate exponential models for various censoring rates. The size and power of these tests against Lehmann alternatives were compared to the size and power of two other tests (Wei and Lachin, 1984 and Wei and Knuiman, 1987). In all simulations the new procedures provide a relatively good power and an accurate control over the size of the test. A real example from the National Cooperative Gallstone Study is given     

A two sample wilcoxon test for progressively censored data

A two sairmle Wilcoxon type statistic is proposed for analyzing data for which the pN(0<p≤l) smallest observations are to be observed sequentially and the study terminated as soon as a statistically significant difference is obtained. The statistic is a special case of a general formulation due to chatteriee and Sen (1973), The asymptotic null distribution is presented and simulation studies reported which indicate chat the asymptotic distribution is useful for pN>60. Monte clarlo experiments comparing this statistic with another Wilcoxon type statistic proposed by Halperin and Ware (1974) are presented.     

A test for the variance residual life

In this paper we develop a test based on the empirical distribution function for the alternative representing 'decreasing variance residual life1 property. The test is consistent with asymptotically normal test statistic and is shown to perform well in the Pitman's asymptotic relative efficiency sense.