Premium
Simultaneous Statistical Inference Concerning the Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMB) of Several Strata in an Epidemiologic Study
Author(s) -
Rao B. Raja,
Marsh Gary M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
biometrical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.108
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-4036
pISSN - 0323-3847
DOI - 10.1002/bimj.4710320118
Subject(s) - null hypothesis , statistics , statistical significance , univariate , standardized mortality ratio , population , statistical power , medicine , statistical hypothesis testing , mathematics , demography , econometrics , cohort , multivariate statistics , environmental health , sociology
In the present paper, simultaneous prediction intervals are constructed for some mortality measures involving real data in a recent retrospective epidemiologic study of a cohort of man‐made mineral fiber workers. The object is to compare a test population with a standard population in which the workers are exposed to several levels (say K ) of a suspected carcinogen and the number of deaths in the K exposure groups are recorded. The SMR is chosen as a mortality measure for this comparison. If the total number of deaths d. in the entire study is known, the number of deaths in the various strata become dependent random variables. Using univariate statistical procedures to test the significance of the individual SMR's is inappropriate and may give misleading conclusions. The present paper shows how to test the simultaneous statistical significance of the SMR's of the K exposure groups, i.e., to test the simultaneous null hypothesis H o : E (SMR 1 ) = E (SMR 2 ) =… E (SMR k ) = 100. If the null hypothesis H o is rejected, it is shown how to identify the SMR (or the SMR's) which contributed to the rejection of H o . The power function of such a test is also constructed for some simple and useful alternative hypotheses.