A1045
Title: Testing covariate effects in the mixture cure model using distance correlation
Authors: Maria Amalia Jacome Pumar - Universidade da Coruna (Spain) [presenting]
Blanca Estela Monroy-Castillo - Universidade da Coruna (Spain)
Ricardo Cao - University of Coruna (Spain)
Abstract: One of the goals of cure models is to test whether a covariate influences the cure rate. Distance correlation is a novel class of multivariate dependence coefficients with advantages over classical correlation coefficients: it is applicable to random vectors of arbitrary dimensions not necessarily equal, and it is zero if and only if the vectors are independent. Distance correlation has been applied in a standard survival model without cure based on the distance covariance between covariates and the survival times. But to the best of knowledge, distance correlation has not been applied yet in the presence of a cure fraction. A method is proposed to study the effect of a covariate on the probability of cure by means of the distance correlation with a procedure that overcomes the challenge of handling the missingness of the cure indicator.
