• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.205-216
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• 2019

Diagnostic tests in medical fields detect or diagnose a disease with results measured by continuous or discrete ordinal data. The performance of a diagnostic test is summarized using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the area under the curve (AUC). The diagnostic test is considered clinically useful if the outcomes in actually-positive cases are higher than actually-negative cases and the ROC curve is concave. In this study, we apply the stochastic ordering method in a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate the proper ROC curve and AUC when the diagnostic test results are measured in discrete ordinal data. We compare the conventional binormal model and binormal model under stochastic ordering. The simulation results and real data analysis for breast cancer indicate that the binormal model under stochastic ordering can be used to estimate the proper ROC curve with a small bias even though the sample sizes were small or the sample size of actually-negative cases varied from actually-positive cases. Therefore, it is appropriate to consider the binormal model under stochastic ordering in the presence of large differences for a sample size between actually-negative and actually-positive groups.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.297-310
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• 2002

Liang and Zeger proposed generalized estimating equations(GEE) for analyzing repeated data which is discrete or continuous. GEE model can be extended to model for repeated categorical data and its estimator has asymptotic multivariate normal distribution in large sample sizes. But GEE is based on large sample asymptotic theory. In this paper, we study the properties of GEE estimators for repeated ordinal data in small sample sizes. We generate ordinal repeated measurements for two groups using two methods. Through Monte Carlo simulation studies we investigate the empirical type 1 error rates, powers, relative efficiencies of the GEE estimators, the effect of unequal sample size of two groups, and the performance of variance estimators for polytomous ordinal response variables, especially in small sample sizes.