Statistical inference for multivariate longitudinal data with irregular auto-correlated error process

Abstract

Multivariate longitudinal data arise frequently in a variety of applications, where multiple outcomes are measured repeatedly from the same subject. In this paper, we first propose a two-stage weighted least square estimation procedure for the regression coefficients when the random error follows an irregular autoregressive (AR) process, and establish asymptotic normality properties for the resulting estimators. We then apply the smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) variable selection approach to determine the order of the AR error process. We further propose a test statistic to check whether multiple responses are correlated at the same observation time, and derive the asymptotic distribution of the proposed test statistic. Several simulated examples and real data analysis are presented to illustrate the finite-sample performance of the proposed method.