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A Test to Detect Within‐family Infectivity when the Whole Epidemic Process is Observed
Author(s) -
Britton Tom
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.359
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1467-9469
pISSN - 0303-6898
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9469.00066
Subject(s) - mathematics , central limit theorem , martingale (probability theory) , estimator , test statistic , counting process , statistic , statistics , population , econometrics , statistical hypothesis testing , demography , sociology
An epidemic model for the spread of an infectious disease in a population of families is considered. The score test of the hypothesis that there is no higher infectivity between family members is constructed under the assumption that the epidemic process is observed continuously up to some time t . The score process is a martingale as a function of t and by letting the number of families tend to infinity, a central limit theorem for the process can be proved. The central limit theorem not only justifies a normal approximation of the test statistic—it also suggests a smaller variance estimator than expected.