Weighted Cox Regression Using the R Package coxphw

Cox's regression model for the analysis of survival data relies on the proportional hazards assumption. However, this assumption is often violated in practice and as a consequence the average relative risk may be under- or overestimated. Weighted estimation of Cox regression is a parsimonious a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Daniela Dunkler, Meinhard Ploner, Michael Schemper, Georg Heinze
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Foundation for Open Access Statistics 2018-04-01
Series:Journal of Statistical Software
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.jstatsoft.org/index.php/jss/article/view/2485
Description
Summary:Cox's regression model for the analysis of survival data relies on the proportional hazards assumption. However, this assumption is often violated in practice and as a consequence the average relative risk may be under- or overestimated. Weighted estimation of Cox regression is a parsimonious alternative which supplies well interpretable average effects also in case of non-proportional hazards. We provide the R package coxphw implementing weighted Cox regression. By means of two biomedical examples appropriate analyses in the presence of non-proportional hazards are exemplified and advantages of weighted Cox regression are discussed. Moreover, using package coxphw, time-dependent effects can be conveniently estimated by including interactions of covariates with arbitrary functions of time.
ISSN:1548-7660