The central theme of this dissertation is the development of a new approach to conceptualize and quantify dependence structures of capture-recapture data for closed populations, with specific emphasis on epidemiological applications. We introduce a measure of source dependence: the Coefficient of Incremental Dependence (CID). Properties of this and the related Coefficient of Source Dependence (CSD) of Vandal, Walker, and Pearson (2005) are presented, in particular their relationships to the conditional independence structures that can be modelled by hierarchical joint log-linear models (HJLLM). From these measures, we develop a new class of marginal log-linear models (MLLM), which we compare and contrast to HJLLMs. / We demonstrate that MLLMs serve to extend the universe of dependence structures of capture-recapture data that can be modelled and easily interpreted. Furthermore, the CIDs and CSDs enable us to meaningfully interpret the parameters of joint log-linear models previously excluded from the analysis of capture-recapture data for reasons of non-interpretability of model parameters. / In order to explore the challenges and features of MLLMs, we show how to produce inference from them under both a maximum likelihood and a Bayesian paradigm. The proposed modelling approach performs well and provides new insight into the fundamental nature of epidemiological capture-recapture data.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.103302 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Turner, Elizabeth L. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Mathematics and Statistics.) |
| Rights | © Elizabeth L. Turner, 2007 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002666576, proquestno: AAINR38655, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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