[R] Survival analysis MLE gives NA or enormous standard errors

Christopher David Desjardins desja004 at umn.edu
Fri Jul 23 21:26:31 CEST 2010


Sorry. I should have included some data. I've attached a subset of my
data (50/192) cases in a Rdata file and have pasted it below.

Running anova I get the following:

> anova(sr.reg.s4.nore)
                   Df Deviance Resid. Df    -2*LL P(>|Chi|)
NULL               NA       NA        45 33.89752        NA
as.factor(lifedxm)  2 2.438211        43 31.45931 0.2954943

That would just be an omnibus test right and should that first NULL NA
line be worrisome? What if I want to test specifically that CONTROL and
BIPOLAR were different and that MAJOR DEPRESSION and BIPOLAR were
different?

I'll look at Hauck-Donner effect.

Thanks,
Chris

> bip.surv.s
   age_sym4 sym4 lifedxm
1  16.12868    0   MAJOR
2  19.32649    0   MAJOR
3  16.55031    0 CONTROL
4  19.36756    0 CONTROL
5  16.09035    0   MAJOR
6  21.50582    0   MAJOR
7  16.36140    0   MAJOR
8  20.57221    0   MAJOR
9  16.45722    0 CONTROL
10 19.94524    0 CONTROL
11 15.79192    0   MAJOR
12 20.76660    0   MAJOR
13 16.15058    0 BIPOLAR
14 19.25804    0 BIPOLAR
15 17.36345    0   MAJOR
16 21.18001    0   MAJOR
17       NA    0 BIPOLAR
18       NA    0 BIPOLAR
19 16.31759    1   MAJOR
20 18.29706    0   MAJOR
21 16.40794    0   MAJOR
22 19.13758    0   MAJOR
23 16.19439    0 CONTROL
24 21.36893    0 CONTROL
25 15.89049    0 CONTROL
26 18.99795    0 CONTROL
27       NA    0 BIPOLAR
28 18.90486    0 BIPOLAR
29 16.36413    0   MAJOR
30 20.42710    0   MAJOR
31 16.65982    0   MAJOR
32 19.45791    0   MAJOR
33 16.64339    0 CONTROL
34 19.40041    0 CONTROL
35 15.37303    1 BIPOLAR
36 19.83847    0 BIPOLAR
37 15.42231    1   MAJOR
38 19.37029    0   MAJOR
39 15.06913    0   MAJOR
40 17.81520    0   MAJOR
41 15.50445    0 BIPOLAR
42 17.92197    0 BIPOLAR
43 15.34565    0 CONTROL
44 18.07529    0 CONTROL
45 15.59480    0 CONTROL
46 19.67420    0 CONTROL
47 14.78987    0   MAJOR
48 20.05476    0   MAJOR
49 14.78713    0   MAJOR
50 19.86858    0   MAJOR


On Fri, 2010-07-23 at 11:52 -0700, Charles C. Berry wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2010, Christopher David Desjardins wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > I am trying to fit the following model:
> >
> > sr.reg.s4.nore <- survreg(Surv(age_sym4,sym4), as.factor(lifedxm),
> > data=bip.surv)
> 
> Next time include a reproducible example. i.e. something we can run.
> 
> Now, Google "Hauck Donner Effect" to understand why
> 
>  	anova(sr.reg.s4.nore)
> 
> is preferred.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> 
> >
> > Where age_sym4 is the age that a subject develops clinical thought
> > problems; sym4 is whether they develop clinical thoughts problems (0 or
> > 1); and lifedxm is mother's diagnosis: BIPOLAR, MAJOR DEPRESSION, or
> > CONTROL.
> >
> > I am interested in whether or not survival differs by this covariate.
> >
> > When I run my model, I am getting the following output:
> >
> >> summary(sr.reg.s4.nore)
> >
> > Call:
> > survreg(formula = Surv(age_sym4, sym4) ~ as.factor(lifedxm),
> >    data = bip.surv)
> >                           Value Std. Error     z       p
> > (Intercept)                4.037      0.455  8.86643
> > 0.000000000000000000755
> > as.factor(lifedxm)CONTROL 14.844   4707.383  0.00315
> > 0.997484052845082791450
> > as.factor(lifedxm)MAJOR    0.706      0.447  1.58037
> > 0.114022774867277756905
> > Log(scale)                -0.290      0.267 -1.08493
> > 0.277952437474223823521
> >
> > Scale= 0.748
> >
> > Weibull distribution
> > Loglik(model)= -76.3   Loglik(intercept only)= -82.6
> > 	Chisq= 12.73 on 2 degrees of freedom, p= 0.0017
> > Number of Newton-Raphson Iterations: 21
> > n=186 (6 observations deleted due to missingness)
> >
> >
> > I am concerned about the p-value of 0.997 and the SE of 4707. I am
> > curious if it has to do with the fact that the CONTROL group doesn't
> > have a mixed response, meaning that all my subjects do not develop
> > clinical levels of thought problems and subsequently 'survive'.
> >
> >> table(bip.surv$sym4,bip.surv$lifedxm)
> >
> >    BIPOLAR CONTROL MAJOR
> >  0      41      60    78
> >  1       7       0     6
> >
> > Is there some sort of way that I can overcome this? Is my model
> > misspecified? Is this better suited to be run as a Bayesian model using
> > priors to overcome the lack of a mixed response?
> >
> > Also, please cc me on an email as I am a digest subscriber.
> > Thanks,
> > Chris
> >
> >
> > -- 
> > Christopher David Desjardins
> > PhD student, Quantitative Methods in Education
> > MS student, Statistics
> > University of Minnesota
> > 192 Education Sciences Building
> > http://cddesjardins.wordpress.com
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> 
> Charles C. Berry                            (858) 534-2098
>                                              Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine
> E mailto:cberry at tajo.ucsd.edu	            UC San Diego
> http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/  La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901
> 
> 

-- 
Christopher David Desjardins
PhD student, Quantitative Methods in Education
MS student, Statistics
University of Minnesota
192 Education Sciences Building
http://cddesjardins.wordpress.com


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