Power divergence approach for one-shot device testing under competing risks
Abstract
Most work on one-shot devices assume that there is only one possible cause of
device failure. However, in practice, it is often the case that the products
under study can experience any one of various possible causes of failure.
Robust estimators and Wald-type tests are developed here for the case of
one-shot devices under competing risks. An extensive simulation study
illustrates the robustness of these divergence-based estimators and test
procedures based on them. A data-driven procedure is proposed for choosing the
optimal estimator for any given data set which is then applied to an example in
the context of survival analysis.