Abstract
The maximum likelihood approach to jointly model the survival time and its longitudinal covariates has been successful to model both processes in longitudinal studies. Random effects in the longitudinal process are often used to model the survival times through a proportional hazards model, and this invokes an EM algorithm to search for the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs). Several intriguing issues are examined here, including the robustness of the MLEs against departure from the normal random effects assumption, and difficulties with the profile likelihood approach to provide reliable estimates for the standard error of the MLEs. We provide insights into the robustness property and suggest to overcome the difficulty of reliable estimates for the standard errors by using bootstrap procedures. Numerical studies and data analysis illustrate our points.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1037-1043 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Biometrics |
Volume | 62 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2006 |
Keywords
- Joint modeling
- Missing information principle
- Nonparametric maximum likelihood
- Posterior density
- Profile likelihood