A finite sample comparison of nonparametric estimates of the effective dose in quantal bioassay

Abstract

To estimate the effective dose level ED_α in the common binary response model, several parametric and nonparametric estimators have been proposed in the literature. In the present article, we focus on nonparametric methods and present a detailed numerical comparison of four different approaches to estimate the ED_α nonparametrically. The methods are briefly reviewed and their finite sample properties are studied by means of a detailed simulation study. Moreover, a data example is presented to illustrate the different concepts.

Keywords:

• binary response model
• effective dose level
• nonparametric regression
• isotonic regression
• order-restricted inference
• local linear regression

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Martina Stein who typed numerous versions of this article with considerable technical expertise. The work of the authors was supported by the Sonderforschungsbereich 475, Komplexitätsreduktion in multivariaten Datenstrukturen and in part by a NIH grant award IR01GM072876:01A1by and an EU-grant award CCR.IHCP.C433208.X0. The authors would also like to thank two referees and the Associate Editor for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.