Empirical Analysis of Interval-Censored Failure Time Data with Linear Transformation Models

Abstract

Interval-censored data naturally arise in many studies. For their regression analysis, many approaches have been proposed under various models and for most of them, the inference is carried out based on the asymptotic normality. In particular, Zhang et al. (2005) discussed the procedure under the linear transformation model. It is well-known that the symmetric property implied by the normal distribution may not be appropriate sometimes. Also the method could underestimate the variance of estimated parameters. This paper proposes an empirical likelihood-based procedure for the problem. Simulation and the analysis of a real data set are conducted to assess the performance of the procedure.

Keywords:

• Estimating equation
• Interval-censored
• Regression analysis
• Transformation models

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 62N01
• 62F12