Parametric models for biomarkers based on flexible size distributions

Apostolos Davillas and Andrew Jones

No 2018-03, ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research

Abstract: Recent advances in social science surveys include collection of biological samples. Although biomarkers offer a large potential for social science and economic research, they impose a number of statistical challenges, often being distributed asymmetrically with heavy tails. Using data from the UK Household Panel Survey (UKHLS), we illustrate the comparative performance of a set of flexible parametric distributions, which allow for a wide range of skewness and kurtosis: the four-parameter generalized beta of the second kind (GB2), the three-parameter generalized gamma (GG) and their three-, two- or one-parameter nested and limiting cases. Commonly used blood-based biomarkers for inflammation, diabetes, cholesterol and stress-related hormones are modelled. Although some of the three-parameter distributions nested within the GB2 outperform the latter for most of the biomarkers considered, the GB2 can be used as a guide for choosing among competing parametric distributions for biomarkers. Going “beyond the mean†to estimate tail probabilities, we find that GB2 performs fairly well with some disparities at the very high levels of HbA1c and fibrinogen. Commonly used OLS models are shown to perform worse than almost all the flexible distributions.

Date: 2018-03-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ecm and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/fi ... ers/iser/2018-03.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Parametric models for biomarkers based on flexible size distributions (2018)
Working Paper: Parametric models for biomarkers based on flexible size distributions (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ese:iserwp:2018-03

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jonathan Nears ().