Analysis of recurrent event data with incomplete observation gaps using piecewise models

Abstract

In a longitudinal study, subjects can experience same type of events repeatedly. Also, there may exist intermittent dropouts resulting in repeated observation gaps during which no recurrent events are observed. Furthermore, when such observation gaps have incomplete forms caused by the unknown termination times of observation gaps, ordinary approaches result in biased estimates. In this study, we investigate the effect of ignoring observation gaps and propose methods to overcome this problem. For estimating the distribution of unknown termination times, an interval-censored mechanism is applied and two cases are considered. Simulation studies are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Conviction data of young drivers with several suspensions are analyzed to illustrate the suggested approach.