• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.499-510
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• 2016

It is very important to select relevant variables in regression models for survival analysis. In this paper, we introduce a penalized variable-selection procedure in multi-level frailty models based on the "frailtyHL" R package (Ha et al., 2012). Here, the estimation procedure of models is based on the penalized hierarchical likelihood, and three penalty functions (LASSO, SCAD and HL) are considered. The proposed methods are illustrated with multi-country/multi-center bladder cancer survival data from the EORTC in Belgium. We compare the results of three variable-selection methods and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. In particular, the results of data analysis showed that the SCAD and HL methods select well important variables than in the LASSO method.