Testing the fit of the logistic model for matched case-control studies

With numerous statistical packages being easily available to conduct the logistic regression analysis, assessment for the goodness-of-fit in the logistic case-control studies becomes more important in practice. While various methods for model checking in conventional case-control studies have been proposed in the literature, methods for checking model adequacy with matched case-control data get relatively less attention. In this study, we propose an omnibus goodness-of-fit test to assess adequacy of the conditional logistic model for matched case-control data. The proposed test can be either constructed based on the discrepancy between two moment estimations or derived to be a score-type test under a general random-effects model. Computation of the proposed test is quite simple in which it does not need to partition the covariate space or to estimate p-value of the test via simulations. The asymptotic null distribution and power calculation of the test are derived under a sequence of alternatives. Empirical type I error rates and powers of the test are performed by simulation studies. An example has been used to illustrate the proposed method as well. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.