Nonparametric Comparison for Multivariate Panel Count Data.

Multivariate panel count data often occur when there exist several related recurrent events or response variables defined by occurrences of related events. For univariate panel count data, several nonparametric treatment comparison procedures have been developed. However, it does not seem to exist a nonparametric procedure for multivariate cases. Based on differences between estimated mean functions, this paper proposes a class of nonparametric test procedures for multivariate panel count data. The asymptotic distribution of the new test statistics is established and a simulation study is conducted. Also the new procedures are applied to a skin cancer problem that motivated this study.