Tests for proportional hazards assumption concerning specified covariates or groups of covariates are proposed. The class of alternatives is wide: log-hazard rates under different values of covariates may cross, approach, go away. The data may be right censored. The limit distribution of the test statistic is derived. Power of the test against approaching alternatives is given. Real data examples are considered.
The purpose of this article is to provide an adaptive estimator of the baseline function in the Cox model with high-dimensional covariates. We consider a two-step procedure : first, we estimate the regression parameter of the Cox model via a Lasso procedure based on the partial log-likelihood, secondly, we plug this Lasso estimator into a least-squares type criterion and then perform a model selection procedure to obtain an adaptive penalized contrast estimator of the baseline function. Using non-asymptotic estimation results stated for the Lasso estimator of the regression parameter, we estab…
We consider a model where the failure hazard function, conditional on a covariate $Z$ is given by $R(t,θ^0|Z)=η\_{γ^0}(t)f\_{β^0}(Z)$, with $θ^0=(β^0,γ^0)^\top\in \mathbb{R}^{m+p}$. The baseline hazard function $η\_{γ^0}$ and relative risk $f\_{β^0}$ belong both to parametric families. The covariate $Z$ is measured through the error model $U=Z+ε$ where $ε$ is independent from $Z$, with known density $f\_ε$. We observe a $n$-sample $(X\_i, D\_i, U\_i)$, $i=1,...,n$, where $X\_i$ is the minimum between the failure time and the censoring time, and $D\_i$ is the censoring indicator. We aim at esti…
A prevalent feature of high-dimensional data is the dependence among covariates, and model selection is known to be challenging when covariates are highly correlated. To perform model selection for the high-dimensional Cox proportional hazards model in presence of correlated covariates with factor structure, we propose a new model, Factor-Augmented Regularized Model for Hazard Regression (FarmHazard), which builds upon latent factors that drive covariate dependence and extends Cox's model. This new model generates procedures that operate in two steps by learning factors and idiosyncratic compo…
In many public health problems, an important goal is to identify the effect of some treatment/intervention on the risk of failure for the whole population. A marginal proportional hazards regression model is often used to analyze such an effect. When dependent censoring is explained by many auxiliary covariates, we utilize two working models to condense high-dimensional covariates to achieve dimension reduction. Then the estimator of the treatment effect is obtained by maximizing a pseudo-likelihood function over a sieve space. Such an estimator is shown to be consistent and asymptotically nor…
For time-to-event data with finitely many competing risks, the proportional hazards model has been a popular tool for relating the cause-specific outcomes to covariates [Prentice et al. Biometrics 34 (1978) 541--554]. This article studies an extension of this approach to allow a continuum of competing risks, in which the cause of failure is replaced by a continuous mark only observed at the failure time. We develop inference for the proportional hazards model in which the regression parameters depend nonparametrically on the mark and the baseline hazard depends nonparametrically on both time a…
We apply Gaussian process (GP) regression, which provides a powerful non-parametric probabilistic method of relating inputs to outputs, to survival data consisting of time-to-event and covariate measurements. In this context, the covariates are regarded as the `inputs' and the event times are the `outputs'. This allows for highly flexible inference of non-linear relationships between covariates and event times. Many existing methods, such as the ubiquitous Cox proportional hazards model, focus primarily on the hazard rate which is typically assumed to take some parametric or semi-parametric fo…
We consider a class of semiparametric regression models which are one-parameter extensions of the Cox [J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 34 (1972) 187-220] model for right-censored univariate failure times. These models assume that the hazard given the covariates and a random frailty unique to each individual has the proportional hazards form multiplied by the frailty. The frailty is assumed to have mean 1 within a known one-parameter family of distributions. Inference is based on a nonparametric likelihood. The behavior of the likelihood maximizer is studied under general conditions where the fitt…
When the difference between treatments in a clinical trial is estimated by a difference in means, then it is well known that randomization ensures unbiassed estimation, even if no account is taken of important baseline covariates. However, when the treatment effect is assessed by other summaries, e.g. by an odds ratio if the outcome is binary, then bias can arise if some covariates are omitted, regardless of the use of randomization for treatment allocation or the size of the trial. We present accurate closed-form approximations for this asymptotic bias when important Normally distributed cova…
We introduce a new test statistic for testing the null hypothesis that the sampling distribution has an increasing hazard rate on a specified interval [0,a]. It is based on a comparison of the empirical distribution function with an isotonic estimate, using the restriction that the hazard is increasing, and measures the excursions of the empirical distribution above the isotonic estimate, due to local non-monotonicity. It is proved in the companion paper Groeneboom and Jongbloed (2011a) that the test statistic is asymptotically normal if the hazard is strictly increasing on the interval [0,a] …
We propose a nonparametric test of independence, termed optHSIC, between a covariate and a right-censored lifetime. Because the presence of censoring creates a challenge in applying the standard permutation-based testing approaches, we use optimal transport to transform the censored dataset into an uncensored one, while preserving the relevant dependencies. We then apply a permutation test using the kernel-based dependence measure as a statistic to the transformed dataset. The type 1 error is proven to be correct in the case where censoring is independent of the covariate. Experiments indicate…
For discrete-time survival data, conditional likelihood inference in Cox's hazard odds model is theoretically desirable but exact calculation is numerical intractable with a moderate to large number of tied events. Unconditional maximum likelihood estimation over both regression coefficients and baseline hazard probabilities can be problematic with a large number of time intervals. We develop new methods and theory using numerically simple estimating functions, along with model-based and model-robust variance estimation, in hazard probability and odds models. For the probability hazard model, …
The pervasive use of prevalent cohort studies on disease duration, increasingly calls for appropriate methodologies to account for the biases that invariably accompany samples formed by such data. It is well-known, for example, that subjects with shorter lifetime are less likely to be present in such studies. Moreover, certain covariate values could be preferentially selected into the sample, being linked to the long-term survivors. The existing methodology for estimation of the propensity score using data collected on prevalent cases requires the correct conditional survival/hazard function g…
Two new test statistics are introduced to test the null hypotheses that the sampling distribution has an increasing hazard rate on a specified interval [0,a]. These statistics are empirical L_1-type distances between the isotonic estimates, which use the monotonicity constraint, and either the empirical distribution function or the empirical cumulative hazard. They measure the excursions of the empirical estimates with respect to the isotonic estimates, due to local non-monotonicity. Asymptotic normality of the test statistics, if the hazard is strictly increasing on [0,a], is established unde…
In this paper the regression discontinuity design is adapted to the survival analysis setting with right-censored data, studied in an intensity based counting process framework. In particular, a local polynomial regression version of the Aalen additive hazards estimator is introduced as an estimator of the difference between two covariate dependent cumulative hazard rate functions. Large-sample theory for this estimator is developed, including confidence intervals that take into account the uncertainty associated with bias correction. As is standard in the causality literature, the models and …
In the presence of prognostic covariates, inference about the treatment effect with time-to-event endpoints is mostly conducted via the stratified log-rank test or the score test based on the Cox proportional hazards model. In their ground-breaking work Ye and Shao (2020) have demonstrated theoretically that when the model is misspecified, the robust score test (Wei and Lin, 1989) as well as the unstratified log-rank test are conservative in trials with stratified randomization. This fact, however, was not established for the Pocock and Simon covariate-adaptive allocation other than through si…
