RT Article
T1 Covariance pattern mixture models for the analysis of multivariate heterogeneous longitudinal data
JF The annals of applied statistics
A1 Anderlucci, Laura
A2 Viroli, Cinzia
LA English
YR 2015
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1866134892
AB We propose a novel approach for modeling multivariate longitudinal data in the presence of unobserved heterogeneity for the analysis of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data. Our proposal can be cast within the framework of linear mixed models with discrete individual random intercepts; however, differently from the standard formulation, the proposed Covariance Pattern Mixture Model (CPMM) does not require the usual local independence assumption. The model is thus able to simultaneously model the heterogeneity, the association among the responses and the temporal dependence structure. We focus on the investigation of temporal patterns related to the cognitive functioning in retired American respondents. In particular, we aim to understand whether it can be affected by some individual socio-economical characteristics and whether it is possible to identify some homogenous groups of respondents that share a similar cognitive profile. An accurate description of the detected groups allows government policy interventions to be opportunely addressed. Results identify three homogenous clusters of individuals with specific cognitive functioning, consistent with the class conditional distribution of the covariates. The flexibility of CPMM allows for a different contribution of each regressor on the responses according to group membership. In so doing, the identified groups receive a global and accurate phenomenological characterization.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AOAS816 in the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
K1 Research
DO 10.1214/15-aoas816