Comparison between Weibull and Cox proportional hazards models

Abstract

The time for an event to take place in an individual is called a survival time. Examples include the time that an individual survives after being diagnosed with a terminal illness or the time that an electronic component functions before failing. A popular parametric model for this type of data is the Weibull model, which is a flexible model that allows for the inclusion of covariates of the survival times. If distributional assumptions are not met or cannot be verified, researchers may turn to the semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model. This model also allows for the inclusion of covariates of survival times but with less restrictive assumptions. This report compares estimates of the slope of the covariate in the proportional hazards model using the parametric Weibull model and the semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model to estimate the slope. Properties of these models are discussed in Chapter 1. Numerical examples and a comparison of the mean square errors of the estimates of the slope of the covariate for various sample sizes and for uncensored and censored data are discussed in Chapter 2. When the shape parameter is known, the Weibull model far out performs the Cox proportional hazards model, but when the shape parameter is unknown, the Cox proportional hazards model and the Weibull model give comparable results.