Comparison of Proposed K Sample Tests with Dietz's Test for Nondecreasing Ordered Alternatives for Bivariate Normal Data
Abstract
There are many situations in which researchers want to consider a set of response variables simultaneously rather than just one response variable. For instance, a possible example is when a researcher wishes to determine the effects of an exercise and diet program on both the cholesterol levels and the weights of obese subjects. Dietz (1989) proposed two multivariate generalizations of the Jonckheere test for ordered alternatives. In this study, we propose k-sample tests for nondecreasing ordered alternatives for bivariate normal data and compare their powers with Dietz's sum statistic. The proposed k-sample tests are based on transformations of bivariate data to univariate data. The transformations considered are the sum, maximum and minimum functions. The ideas for these transformations come from the Leconte, Moreau, and Lellouch (1994). After the underlying bivariate normal data are reduced to univariate data, the Jonckheere-Terpstra (JT) test (Terpstra, 1952 and Jonckheere, 1954) and the Modified Jonckheere-Terpstra (MJT) test (Tryon and Hettmansperger, 1973) are applied to the univariate data. A simulation study is conducted to compare the proposed tests with Dietz's test for k bivariate normal populations (k=3, 4, 5). A variety of sample sizes and various location shifts are considered in this study. Two different correlations are used for the bivariate normal distributions. The simulation results show that generally the Dietz test performs the best for the situations considered with the underlying bivariate normal distribution. The estimated powers of MJT sum and JT sum are often close with the MJT sum generally having a little higher power. The sum transformation was the best of the three transformations to use for bivariate normal data.