Analyzing multivariate survival data using composite likelihood and flexible parametric modeling of the hazard functions.

In this paper, we model multivariate time-to-event data by composite likelihood of pairwise frailty likelihoods and marginal hazards using natural cubic splines. Both right- and interval-censored data are considered. The suggested approach is applied on two types of family studies using the gamma- and stable frailty distribution: The first study is on adoption data where the association between survival in families of adopted children and their adoptive and biological parents is studied. The second study is a cross-sectional study of the occurrence of back and neck pain in twins, illustrating the methodology in the context of genetic epidemiology.