The Statistical Analysis of Parameter Model with an Assumed Copula for Dependent Censoring Data

In collecting clinical data, data would be censored due to competing risks or patient withdrawal. The statistical inference for censoring data is always based on the assumption that the failure time and censoring time is independent. But in practice the failure time and censoring time are often dependent. Dependent censoring make the job to deal with censoring data more complicated. In this paper, we assume that the joint distribution of the failure time variable and censoring time variable is a function of their marginal distributions. This function is called a copula. Under prespecified copulas, the maximum likelihood estimators for cox proportional hazards models are worked out. Statistical analysis results are carried by simulations. When dependent censoring happens, the proposed method will do better than the traditional method used in independent situations. Simulation results show that the proposed method can get efficient estimations.