title: A time-varying effect model for studying gender differences in health behavior.
abstract: This study proposes a time-varying effect model that can be used to characterize gender-specific trajectories of health behaviors and conduct hypothesis testing for gender differences. The motivating examples demonstrate that the proposed model is applicable to not only multi-wave longitudinal studies but also short-term studies that involve intensive data collection. The simulation study shows that the accuracy of estimation of trajectory functions improves as the sample size and the number of time points increase. In terms of the performance of the hypothesis testing, the type I error rates are close to their corresponding significance levels under all combinations of sample size and number of time points. Furthermore, the power increases as the alternative hypothesis deviates more from the null hypothesis, and the rate of this increasing trend is higher when the sample size and the number of time points are larger.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Statistics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Songshan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Psychiatry & Addiction Research Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: James A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Cranford
authors.affiliation: 3 Department of Statistics and The Methodology Center, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Runze
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Psychiatry & Addiction Research Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Zucker
authors.affiliation: 4 School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Buu
mesh_terms: D056808:Biostatistics / Q000379:methods; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011584:Psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012307:Risk Factors; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: B-spline; Longitudinal data; mixed effect; substance abuse; time-varying effect