Ng. Becker et Js. Cui, ESTIMATING A DELAY DISTRIBUTION FROM INCOMPLETE DATA, WITH APPLICATION TO REPORTING LAGS FOR AIDS CASES, Statistics in medicine, 16(20), 1997, pp. 2339-2347
Statistical inference for the probability distribution of a reporting
delay is considered when delays are recorded only after a certain poin
t in time tau. A method is proposed which utilizes data on incidences
arising prior to tau. By a suitable choice of parameters we find expli
cit expressions for maximum likelihood estimates and standard errors.
An application to reporting delay data on Australian AIDS-diagnoses de
monstrates that inclusion of data on AIDS diagnoses made prior to tau
results in significant gains in the precision of estimates. A simulati
on study indicates for this data set that there is minimal bias in the
estimates and the large sample formulae for the standard errors give
good estimates of the standard deviation of the estimators. (C) 1997 b
y John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.