Effect of Heterogeneous Survival on Bird-Banding Model Confidence Interval Coverage Rates

Abstract

Unmodeled heterogeneity in survival rates can bias point and interval estimates of survival rate, leading to erroneous inference. I examined the effect of heterogeneous recovery and survival probabilities on confidence intervals computed for S i and S using a model that assumed no heterogeneity in the population. The rates at which nominally 95% confidence intervals constructed using Ŝ i and Ŝ#58, and their respective standard errors, covered the true population expected values were lowest for positively correlated subgroup recovery and survival probabilities