Analyzing Zero-Truncated Recurrent Events by Stratified Regression with Time-Varying Coefficients

Abstract: This paper presents a strategy for analyzing zero-truncated recurrent events data. Motivated by a pediatric mental health care (PMHC) program, we are particularly concerned with how the event occurrence depends on the occurrences in the past. We consider a stratified Cox regression model with time-varying coefficients and propose a procedure for estimating the model parameters using the zero-truncated data integrated with population census information. We evaluate the finite-sample performance of the proposed estimator through simulation and establish its asymptotic properties. Data from the PMHC program are used throughout the paper to motivate and to illustrate the proposed approach.