Tarone R E, Chu K C
Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
J Epidemiol Biostat. 2000;5(3):177-91.
Although interpretation of age-period-cohort analyses is complicated by the non-identifiability of maximum likelihood estimates, changes in the slope of the birth-cohort effect curve are identifiable and have potential aetiologic significance.
A nonparametric test for a change in the slope of the birth-cohort trend has been developed. The test is a generalisation of the sign test and is based on permutational distributions. A method for identifying interactions between age and calendar-period effects is also presented.
The nonparametric method is shown to be powerful in detecting changes in the slope of the birth-cohort trend, although its power can be reduced considerably by calendar-period patterns of risk. The method identifies a previously unidentified decrease in the birth-cohort risk of lung-cancer mortality from 1912 to 1919, which appears to reflect a reduction in the initiation of smoking by young men at the beginning of the Great Depression (1930s). The method also detects an interaction between age and calendar period in leukemia mortality rates, reflecting the better response of children to chemotherapy.
The proposed nonparametric method provides a data analytic approach, which is a useful adjunct to log-linear Poisson analysis of age-period-cohort models, either in the initial model building stage, or in the final interpretation stage.
尽管年龄-时期-队列分析的解释因最大似然估计的不可识别性而变得复杂，但出生队列效应曲线斜率的变化是可识别的，并且具有潜在的病因学意义。
已开发出一种用于检验出生队列趋势斜率变化的非参数检验方法。该检验是符号检验的推广，基于排列分布。还提出了一种识别年龄与日历时期效应之间相互作用的方法。
该非参数方法在检测出生队列趋势斜率变化方面显示出强大的功效，尽管其功效可能会因日历时期的风险模式而大幅降低。该方法识别出1912年至1919年出生队列肺癌死亡率风险存在先前未被识别的下降，这似乎反映了大萧条（20世纪30年代）初期年轻男性吸烟起始率的降低。该方法还检测到白血病死亡率中年龄与日历时期之间的相互作用，反映了儿童对化疗的更好反应。
所提出的非参数方法提供了一种数据分析方法，无论是在初始模型构建阶段还是最终解释阶段，都是年龄-时期-队列模型对数线性泊松分析的有用辅助手段。
