SEMIPARAMETRIC REGRESSION AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

本应用程序的目的是开发半参数回归方法，用于环境健康研究的设计和分析。研究的主要领域是(1)扩展广义加性建模方法以辅助几项环境健康研究，特别是那些涉及地理和缺失数据的研究；(2)扩展条件面板设计以允许纳入非参数关系；(3)结合分布滞后和变系数模型来辅助空气污染研究。第一个目标是涉及最多的，并由一些研究推动，这些研究涉及地理、聚集、缺失和时间顺序的数据；但也受益于相加建模。这些研究包括疾病地图、心脏脆弱性和空气污染、花粉预测和糖尿病研究。提出了加性模型的扩展，以处理地质统计学方法(‘克立格法’)、混合效应和自回归。一些数据集相当大，因此开发计算效率更高的模型是另一个关键组成部分。第二个目标涉及最近开发的一种低成本设计，该设计在一项关于空气过敏原和哮喘的纵向研究中评估时变的协变量影响。能够以灵活的方式控制协变量，如季节性和温度，这一点很重要，因此提出了对协变量的光滑函数的扩展。第三个目标是由几项空气污染研究推动的，在这些研究中，刺激的影响分布在时间滞后上，并受到辅助变量的修正。拟议的研究将涉及使用真实数据进行实证数据分析以及理论和方法。赠款的一个目的是支持对三位主要调查人员作为克雷格中心赠款主任和联席主任的工作产生的想法进行方法论研究。

The purpose of this application is to develop semiparametric regression methods for the design and analysis of environmental health studies. The primary areas of investigations are (1) extension of generalized additive modeling methodology for aiding several environmental health studies, particularly those involving geographical and missing data; (2) extension of conditional panel designs to allow for incorporation of nonparametric relationships; (3) combination of distributed lag and varying coefficient models to aid air pollution research. The first aim is the most involved and is driven by a number of studies that involve geographical, clustered, missing and time-ordered data; but also benefit from additive modeling. These studies include disease mapping, cardiac vulnerability and air pollution, pollen forecasting and diabetes research. Extensions of the additive model to handle geostatistical methods ('kriging'), mixed effects and autoregression are proposed. Some of the data sets are quite large so the development of more computationally efficient models is another key component. The second aim concerns a low-cost design that has been developed recently to assess time-varying covariate effects in a longitudinal study on aeroallergens and asthma. It is important to be able to control for covariates such as seasonality and temperature in a flexible fashion so the extension to smooth functions of covariates is proposed. The third aim is motivated by several air pollution studies where the effect of a stimulus is distributed across time lags, as well as being subjected to modification by an auxiliary variable. The proposed research will involve empirical data analysis with real data as well as theory and methodology. One purpose of the grant is to provide support for methodological research on ideas that arise out of the work of the three main investigators as director and co-directors of the Kresge Center Grant.