Jornal de Biometria e Bioestatística

Prior Elicitation in Bayesian Quantile Regression for Longitudinal Data

Abstract

Rahim Alhamzawi, Keming Yu and Jianxin Pan

In this paper, we introduce Bayesian quantile regression for longitudinal data in terms of informative priors and Gibbs sampling. We develop methods for eliciting prior distribution to incorporate historical data gathered from similar previous studies. The methods can be used either with no prior data or with complete prior data. The advantage of the methods is that the prior distribution is changing automatically when we change the quantile. We propose Gibbs sampling methods which are computationally efficient and easy to implement. The methods are illustrated with both simulation and real data.