An age-adjusted trend test for the tumor incidence rate for multiple-sacrifice experiments

The nonparametric age-adjusted trend test for the tumor incidence rate proposed by Malani and Lu (1993, Communications in Statistics--Theory and Methods 22, 1557-1584) is modified in two ways to improve the size of the test. First, the tumor incidence rate is constrained to be nonnegative, and second, a conditional variance is used in place of the asymptotic variance based on the delta method. A Monte Carlo simulation study demonstrates the improvement in size of test. The proposed test can be viewed also as a modification of the two-group test of Dewanji and Kalbfleisch (1986, Biometrics 42, 325-341), although their maximum likelihood routine is based on a different formulation of the problem.