Abstract
In the context of survival analysis it is possible that increasing the value of a covariate X has a beneficial effect on a failure time, but this effect is reversed when conditioning on any possible value of another covariate Y. When studying causal effects and influence of covariates on a failure time, this state of affairs appears paradoxical and raises questions about the real effect of X. Situations of this kind may be seen as a version of Simpson's paradox. In this paper, we study this phenomenon in terms of the linear transformation model. The introduction of a time variable makes the paradox more interesting and intricate: it may hold conditionally on a certain survival time, i.e. on an event of the type [T>t] for some but not all t, and it may hold only for some range of survival times.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 463-480 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Scandinavian Journal of Statistics |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2009 |
Keywords
- Cox model
- Detrimental covariate
- Linear transformation model
- Omitting covariates
- Positive dependence
- Proportional hazard
- Proportional odds model
- Protective covariate
- Total positivity