Robust weighted generalized estimating equations based on statistical depth

ABSTRACT

Most of the longitudinal data contain influential points and for analyzing them generalized and weighted generalized estimating equations (GEEs and WGEEs) are highly influenced by these points. An approach for dealing with outliers is having weight functions. In this article, we propose some new weights based on the statistical depth. These weights express centrality of points with respect to the whole sample with a smaller depth (larger depth) for the point far from the center (for the point near the center). The proposed approach leads to robust WGEE. These approaches are applied on two real datasets and some simulation studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Generalized estimating equations
• Longitudinal data
• Outlier points
• Statistical Depth

MATHEMATICS SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION:

• 62H12
• 62J12