node_cox: Generate Data from a Cox-Regression Model

In simDAG: Simulate Data from a (Time-Dependent) Causal DAG

Generate Data from a Cox-Regression Model

Description

Data from the parents is used to generate the node using cox-regression using the method of Bender et al. (2005). Directly allows users to specify arbitrary baseline hazard functions.

Usage

node_cox(data, parents, formula=NULL, betas,
         surv_dist, lambda, gamma,
         cens_dist=NULL, cens_args, name,
         as_two_cols=TRUE, left=0,
         basehaz_grid=NULL, extrapolate=FALSE,
         as_integer=FALSE, ...)

Arguments

data	A data.table (or something that can be coerced to a data.table) containing all columns specified by parents.
parents	A character vector specifying the names of the parents that this particular child node has. If non-linear combinations or interaction effects should be included, the user may specify the formula argument instead.
formula	An optional formula object to describe how the node should be generated or NULL (default). If supplied it should start with ~, having nothing else on the left hand side. The right hand side may contain any valid formula syntax, such as A + B or A + B + I(A^2), allowing non-linear effects. If this argument is defined, there is no need to define the parents argument. For example, using parents=c("A", "B") is equal to using formula= ~ A + B.
betas	A numeric vector with length equal to parents, specifying the causal beta coefficients used to generate the node.
surv_dist	A single character specifying the distribution that should be used when generating the survival times. Can be either "weibull" or "exponential". Alternatively, a custom function with a single argument, defining the baseline hazard, may be supplied. This may be any function, as long as it is vectorized and returns strictly positive numbers for any supplied time.
lambda	A single number used as parameter defined by surv_dist. Ignored if surv_dist is a function.
gamma	A single number used as parameter defined by surv_dist. Ignored if surv_dist is a function.
cens_dist	A single character naming the distribution function that should be used to generate the censoring times or a suitable function. For example, "runif" could be used to generate uniformly distributed censoring times. Set to NULL to get no censoring (default).
cens_args	A list of named arguments which will be passed to the function specified by the cens_dist argument.
name	A single character string specifying the name of the node.
as_two_cols	Either TRUE or FALSE, specifying whether the output should be divided into two columns. When cens_dist is specified, this argument will always be treated as TRUE because two columns are needed to encode both the time to the event and the status indicator. When no censoring is applied, however, users may set this argument to FALSE to simply return the numbers as they are.
left	Either a single number >= 0, or a numeric vector of length nrow(data) containing only numbers >= 0. When simulating the survival times, only numbers larger than these will be generated using correctly left-truncated sampling. Note that this does not affect the censoring times, only the generated survival times will be left-truncated. Set to 0 (default) to not use left-truncation.
basehaz_grid	A numeric vector specifying the time grid used to numerically approximate the cumulative baseline hazard, whenever surv_dist is a function (ignored otherwise). This grid should not include 0. Internally, it is used to first evaluate the surv_dist at each value on the grid. Then, the trapezoid rule is used to integrate the function over time to obtain the cumulative baseline hazard, which is then inverted to simulate the survival times.
extrapolate	Either TRUE or FALSE, specifying whether extrapolation of the inverted cumulative baseline hazard should be allowed when supplying a function to surv_dist (ignored otherwise). Whenever a cumulative hazard is generated that is larger than the cumulative baseline hazard at max(basehaz_grid), extrapolation is needed. If this argument is set to FALSE (default), an error will be returned in such cases. In almost all scenarios, this argument should be kept at FALSE. Only when users are strictly interested in values lower than max(basehaz_grid), it may be set to TRUE. In this case, all values that should be larger than max(basehaz_grid) are simply set to max(basehaz_grid) with no indicator. May be useful for discrete-event simulations conducted using sim_discrete_event.
as_integer	Either TRUE or FALSE, specifying whether the generated continuous times should be rounded up to the next integer (using ceiling).
...	Further arguments passed to internal functions. Should usually not be used by users.

Details

The survival times are generated according to the Cox proportional-hazards regression model as defined by the user. How exactly the data-generation works is described in detail in Bender et al. (2005). Briefly, it uses the method of inverted cumulative hazards. When surv_dist is not a function, the exact equations given in Bender et al. (2005) are used. When a custom function is supplied to surv_dist instead, numerical approximations are used. To also include censoring, this function allows the user to supply a function that generates random censoring times. If the censoring time is smaller than the generated survival time, the individual is considered censored.

Unlike the other node type functions, this function usually adds two columns to the resulting dataset instead of one. The first column is called paste0(name, "_status") and is a logical variable, where TRUE indicates that the event has happened and FALSE indicates right-censoring. The second column is named paste0(name, "_time") and includes the survival or censoring time corresponding to the previously mentioned event indicator. This is the standard format for right-censored time-to-event data without time-varying covariates. If no censoring is applied, this behavior can be turned off using the as_two_cols argument.

To simulate more complex time-to-event data, the user may need to use the sim_discrete_time or sim_discrete_event functions instead.

Value

Returns a data.table of length nrow(data) containing two columns if as_two_cols=TRUE and always when cens_dist is specified. In this case, both columns start with the nodes name and end with _status and _time. The first is a logical vector, the second a numeric one. If as_two_cols=FALSE and cens_dist is NULL, a numeric vector is returned instead.

Note

This function was updated internally in version 0.5.0 to make it faster and to allow the left argument. Generating data using this updated version will generally result in different results as compared to earlier versions, even when using the same random number generator seed. To replicate earlier results, please install earlier versions of this package.

Author(s)

Robin Denz

References

Bender R, Augustin T, Blettner M. Generating survival times to simulate Cox proportional hazards models. Statistics in Medicine. 2005; 24 (11): 1713-1723.

Examples

library(simDAG)

set.seed(3454)

# using a Cox model with a Weibull baseline hazard function
dag <- empty_dag() +
  node("age", type="rnorm", mean=50, sd=4) +
  node("sex", type="rbernoulli", p=0.5) +
  node("death", type="cox", parents=c("sex", "age"), betas=c(1.1, 0.4),
       surv_dist="weibull", lambda=1.1, gamma=0.7, cens_dist="runif",
       cens_args=list(min=0, max=1))

sim_dat <- sim_from_dag(dag=dag, n_sim=1000)

## supplying a custom baseline hazard function

# some arbitrary baseline hazard function with two hills
fbasehaz <- function(t) {
  0.002 +
    0.01 * exp(-((t - 200)^2) / (2 * 50^2)) +   # first hill
    0.008 * exp(-((t - 700)^2) / (2 * 80^2))    # second hill
}

# some example DAG
dag <- empty_dag() +
  node(c("A", "B"), type="rbernoulli") +
  node("Y", type="cox", formula= ~ 0.5*A + -1.5*B, surv_dist=fbasehaz,
       basehaz_grid=1:100000, extrapolate=FALSE)

data <- sim_from_dag(dag, n_sim=100)

simDAG documentation built on May 14, 2026, 5:11 p.m.