Smooth-car Mixed Models for Spatial Count Data Articles uri icon

publication date

  • January 2009

start page

  • 2968

end page

  • 2979

issue

  • 8

volume

  • 53

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0167-9473

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1872-7352

abstract

  • Penalized splines (P-splines) and individual random effects are used for the analysis of spatial count data. P-splines are represented as mixed models to give a unified approach to the model estimation procedure. First, a model where the spatial variation is modelled by a two-dimensional P-spline at the centroids of the areas or regions is considered. In addition, individual area-effects are incorporated as random effects to account for individual variation among regions. Finally, the model is extended by considering a conditional autoregressive (CAR) structure for the random effects, these are the so called "Smooth-CAR" models, with the aim of separating the large-scale geographical trend, and local spatial correlation. The methodology proposed is applied to the analysis of lip cancer incidence rates in Scotland.