Leiden University Student Repository

Heeman, D.F. (2021)

Bayesian Tests for Conditional Independence in Contingency Tables: A simulation Study on Bayes factors for conditional independence tests in 2x2xK contingency tables

Master thesis | Statistics and Data Science

In the analysis of 2×2×Kcontingency tables, a common hypothesis is the conditionalindependence of rows and columns controlling for a third variable. While frequentist ver-sions to test this hypothesis (e.g., the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel) exist, it was the goal ofthis thesis to evaluate a Bayes factor alternative for the conditional independence testin contingency tables. Framing the test as a Bayesian model comparison using general-ized linear models, multipleg-prior variants were evaluated and compared to each otherthrough a simulation study. The simulation results indicate that priors like the hyper-g/n,intrinsic or the robust prior generally show desirable patterns for medium to large effectsizes, but are prone to lead to wrong conclusions for small underlying effect sizes unlessthe sample size is large. The R code for the simulation study can be found on GitHub:https://github.com/DHeemann/Bayesian-conditional-independence-simulation-

Author

Heeman, D.F.

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Supervisors

Grünwald, P.D.
Ly, A.

ECTS Credits

24

Language

en