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ESTIMATING THE FALSE NEGATIVE FRACTION FOR A MULTIPLE SCREENING TEST FOR BOWEL CANCER WHEN NEGATIVES ARE NOT VERIFIED
Author(s) -
Lloyd Chris J.,
Frommer Donald
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.434
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-842X
pISSN - 1369-1473
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-842x.2004.00351.x
Subject(s) - mathematics , fraction (chemistry) , test (biology) , inference , statistics , selection (genetic algorithm) , cancer , false negative reactions , medicine , computer science , artificial intelligence , paleontology , chemistry , organic chemistry , biology
Summary This paper aims to estimate the false negative fraction of a multiple screening test for bowel cancer, where those who give negative results for six consecutive tests do not have their true disease status verified. A subset of these same individuals is given a further screening test, for the sole purpose of evaluating the accuracy of the primary test. This paper proposes a beta heterogeneity model for the probability of a diseased individual ‘testing positive’ on any single test, and it examines the consequences of this model for inference on the false negative fraction. The method can be generalized to the case where selection for further testing is informative, though this did not appear to be the case for the bowel‐cancer data.