Analysis of Bilateral and Unilateral Data: A Comparative Review of Model-Based and MLE-Based Methods for the Homogeneity Test of Proportions
Pub. online: 28 January 2025
Type: Statistical Data Science
Open Access
Open Access
Received
29 September 2024
29 September 2024
Accepted
8 January 2025
8 January 2025
Published
28 January 2025
28 January 2025
Abstract
In many medical comparative studies, subjects may provide either bilateral or unilateral data. While numerous testing procedures have been proposed for bilateral data that account for the intra-class correlation between paired organs of the same individual, few studies have thoroughly explored combined correlated bilateral and unilateral data. Ma and Wang (2021) introduced three test procedures based on the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) algorithm for general g groups. In this article, we employ a model-based approach that treats the measurements from both eyes of each subject as repeated observations. We then compare this approach with Ma and Wang’s Score test procedure. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the MLE-based Score test offers certain advantages under specific conditions. However, this model-based method lacks an explicit form for the test statistic, limiting its potential for further development of an exact test.
Supplementary material
Supplementary MaterialThis Supplementary Material contains SAS scripts for analyzing data from two groups (
g
=
2 ) for bilateral and unilateral
m
=
n
=
20 ; true event proportion
π
0
=
0.5 ; Correlation
ρ
=
0.4 . Files:
1.
‘README.txt’: The explanation of the SAS scripts.
2.
‘sim02_20_20_0.5_0.4.sas’: Prepares the dataset for analysis.
3.
‘analysis.sas’: Performs statistical analysis.
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