Scientists often encounter unobserved or missing measurements that are typically reported as less than a fixed detection limit. This especially occurs in the environmental sciences when detection of low exposures are not possible due to limitations of the measuring instrument, and the resulting data are often referred to as type I and II left censored data. Observations lying below this detection limit are therefore often ignored, or `guessed' because it cannot be measured accurately. However, reliable estimates of the population parameters are nevertheless required to perform statistical analysis. The problem of dealing with values below a detection limit becomes increasingly complex when a large number of observations are present below this limit. Researchers thus have interest in developing statistical robust estimation procedures for dealing with left- or right-censored data sets (SinghandNocerino2002). The aim of this study focuses on several main components regarding the problems mentioned above. The imputation of censored data below a fixed detection limit are studied, particularly using the maximum likelihood procedure of Cohen(1959), and several variants thereof, in combination with four new variations of the multiple imputation concept found in literature. Furthermore, the focus also falls strongly on estimating the density of the resulting imputed, `complete' data set by applying various kernel density estimators. It should be noted that bandwidth selection issues are not of importance in this study, and will be left for further research. In this study, however, the maximum likelihood estimation method of Cohen (1959) will be compared with several variant methods, to establish which of these maximum likelihood estimation procedures for censored data estimates the population parameters of three chosen Lognormal distribution, the most reliably in terms of well-known discrepancy measures. These methods will be implemented in combination with four new multiple imputation procedures, respectively, to assess which of these nonparametric methods are most effective with imputing the 12 censored values below the detection limit, with regards to the global discrepancy measures mentioned above. Several variations of the Parzen-Rosenblatt kernel density estimate will be fitted to the complete filled-in data sets, obtained from the previous methods, to establish which is the preferred data-driven method to estimate these densities. The primary focus of the current study will therefore be the performance of the four chosen multiple imputation methods, as well as the recommendation of methods and procedural combinations to deal with data in the presence of a detection limit. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation study was performed to compare the various methods and procedural combinations. Conclusions and recommendations regarding the best of these methods and combinations are made based on the study's results. / MSc (Statistics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/15363 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Liebenberg, Shawn Carl |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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