calc_power_prior_weibull: Calculate Power Prior Weibull

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Calculate Power Prior Weibull

Description

Calculate an approximate (potentially inverse probability weighted) multivariate normal power prior for the log-shape and log-inverse-scale parameters of a Weibull likelihood for external time-to-event control data.

Usage

calc_power_prior_weibull(
  external_data,
  response,
  event,
  intercept,
  shape,
  approximation = c("Laplace", "MCMC"),
  ...
)

Arguments

external_data	This can either be a prop_scr_obj created by calling create_prop_scr() or a tibble of the external data. If it is just a tibble the weights will be assumed to be 1. Only the external data for the arm(s) of interest should be included in this object (e.g., external control data if creating a power prior for the control Weibull shape and intercept parameters)
response	Name of response variable
event	Name of event indicator variable (1: event; 0: censored)
intercept	Normal distributional object that is the initial prior for the intercept (i.e., log-inverse-scale) parameter
shape	Integer value that is the scale of the half-normal prior for the shape parameter
approximation	Type of approximation to be used. Either Laplace or MCMC. Laplace is used by default because it is faster than MCMC.
...	Arguments passed to rstan::sampling (e.g. iter, chains).

Details

Weighted participant-level response data from the control arm of an external study are incorporated into an approximated inverse probability weighted (IPW) power prior for the parameter vector \boldsymbol{\theta}_C = \{\log(\alpha), \beta\}, where \beta = -\log(\sigma) is the intercept parameter of a Weibull proportional hazards regression model and \alpha and \sigma are the Weibull shape and scale parameters, respectively. When borrowing information from an external dataset of size N_{E}, the IPW likelihood of the external response data \boldsymbol{y}_E with event indicators \boldsymbol{\nu}_E and weights \hat{\boldsymbol{a}}_0 is defined as

\mathcal{L}_E(\alpha, \sigma \mid \boldsymbol{y}_E, \boldsymbol{\nu}_E, \hat{\boldsymbol{a}}_0) \propto \prod_{i=1}^{N_E} \left\{ \left( \frac{\alpha}{\sigma} \right) \left( \frac{y_i}{\sigma} \right)^{\alpha - 1} \exp \left( -\left( \frac{y_i}{\sigma} \right)^\alpha \right) \right\}^{\hat{a}_{0i} \nu_i} \left\{ \exp \left( -\left( \frac{y_i}{\sigma} \right)^\alpha \right) \right\}^{\hat{a}_{0i}(1 - \nu_i)}.

The initial priors for the intercept parameter \beta and the shape parameter \alpha are assumed to be normal and half-normal, respectively, which can be defined using the intercept and shape arguments.

The power prior for \boldsymbol{\theta}_C does not have a closed form, and thus we approximate it via a bivariate normal distribution; i.e.,

\boldsymbol{\theta}_C \mid \boldsymbol{y}_E, \boldsymbol{\nu}_E, \hat{\boldsymbol{a}}_0 \; \dot\sim \; \mbox{MVN} \left( \tilde{\boldsymbol{\mu}}_0, \tilde{\boldsymbol{\Sigma}}_0 \right).

If approximation = Laplace, then \tilde{\boldsymbol{\mu}}_0 is the mode vector of the IPW power prior and \tilde{\boldsymbol{\Sigma}}_0 is the negative inverse of the Hessian of the log IPW power prior evaluated at the mode. If approximation = MCMC, then MCMC samples are obtained from the IPW power prior, and \tilde{\boldsymbol{\mu}}_0 and \tilde{\boldsymbol{\Sigma}}_0 are the estimated mean vector and covariance matrix of these MCMC samples. Note that the Laplace approximation method is faster due to its use of optimization instead of MCMC sampling.

The first element of the mean vector and the first row/column of covariance matrix correspond to the log-shape parameter (\log(\alpha)), and the second element corresponds to the intercept (\beta, the log-inverse-scale) parameter.

Value

Multivariate Normal Distributional Object

See Also

Other power prior: calc_power_prior_beta(), calc_power_prior_norm()

Examples

library(distributional)
library(dplyr)
# This function can be used directly on the data
calc_power_prior_weibull(ex_tte_df,
                         response = y,
                         event = event,
                         intercept = dist_normal(0, 10),
                         shape = 50,
                         approximation = "Laplace")

# Or this function can be used with a propensity score object
ps_obj <- calc_prop_scr(internal_df = filter(int_tte_df, trt == 0),
                        external_df = ex_tte_df,
                        id_col = subjid,
                        model = ~ cov1 + cov2 + cov3 + cov4)
calc_power_prior_weibull(ps_obj,
                         response = y,
                         event = event,
                         intercept = dist_normal(0, 10),
                         shape = 50,
                         approximation = "Laplace")

beastt documentation built on June 8, 2025, 11:42 a.m.