I have endeavored to provide a comprehensive introduction to a wide - riety of statistical methods for the analysis of repeated measurements. I envision this book primarily as a textbook, because the notes on which it is based have been used in a semester-length graduate course I have taught since1991.Thiscourseisprimarilytakenbygraduatestudentsinbiostat- tics and statistics, although students and faculty from other departments have audited the course. I also anticipate that the book will be a useful r- erence for practicing statisticians. This assessment is based on the positive responses I have received to numerous short courses I have taught on this topic to academic and industry groups. Althoughmyintentistoprovideareasonablycomprehensiveoverviewof methodsfortheanalysisofrepeatedmeasurements,Idonotviewthisbook as a de?nitive “state of the art” compendium of research in this area. Some general approaches are extremely active areas of current research, and it is not feasible, given the goals of this book, to include a comprehensive summary and list of references. Instead, my focus is primarily on methods that are implemented in standard statistical software packages. As a result, thelevelofdetailonsometopicsislessthaninotherbooks,andsomemore recent methods of analysis are not included. One particular example is the topic of nonlinear mixed models for the analysis of repeated measurements (Davidian and Giltinan, 1995; Vonesh and Chinchilli, 1996). With respect to some of the more recent methods of analysis, I do attempt to mention some of the areas of current research.
This book provides a comprehensive summary of a wide variety of statistical methods for the analysis of repeated measurements. It is designed to be both a useful reference for practitioners and a textbook for a graduate-level course focused on methods for the analysis of repeated measurements. This book will be of interest to
* Statisticians in academics, industry, and research organizations
* Scientists who design and analyze studies in which repeated measurements are obtained from each experimental unit
* Graduate students in statistics and biostatistics.
The prerequisites are knowledge of mathematical statistics at the level of Hogg and Craig (1995) and a course in linear regression and ANOVA at the level of Neter et. al. (1985).
The important features of this book include a comprehensive coverage of classical and recent methods for continuous and categorical outcome variables; numerous homework problems at the end of each chapter; and the extensive use of real data sets in examples and homework problems.
The 80 data sets used in the examples and homework problems can be downloaded from www.springer-ny.com at the list of author websites. Since many of the data sets can be used to demonstrate multiple methods of analysis, instructors can easily develop additional homework problems and exam questions based on the data sets provided. In addition, overhead transparencies produced using TeX and solutions to homework problems are available to course instructors. The overheads also include programming statements and computer output for the examples, prepared primarily using the SAS System.
Charles S. Davis is Senior Director of Biostatistics at Elan Pharmaceuticals, San Diego, California. He received an "Excellence in Continuing Education" award from the American Statistical Association in 2001 and has served as associate editor of the journals Controlled Clinical Trials and The American Statistician and as chair of the Biometrics Section of the ASA.
