In reliability and life-testing experiments, the researcher is often interested in the effects of extreme or varying stress levels, such as temperature, voltage, and load, on the lifetimes of experimental units. Accelerated testing allows the experimenter to increase these stress levels to obtain information on the parameters of the life distributions more quickly than would be possible under normal operating conditions. A special class of accelerated tests are step-stress tests that allow the experimenter to increase the stress levels at fixed times during the experiment. In this article, we consider the simple step-stress model under Type-II censoring. We derive the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) of the parameters assuming a cumulative exposure model with lifetimes being exponentially distributed. The exact distributions of the MLEs of parameters are obtained through the use of conditional moment-generating functions. We also derive confidence intervals for the parameters using these exact distributions, asymptotic distributions, and the parametric bootstrap method, and assess their performance through a Monte Carlo simulation study.

In this paper, the estimation of parameters for a three-parameter Weibull distribution based on progressively Type-II right censored sample is studied. Different estimation procedures for complete sample are generalized to the case with progressively censored data. These methods include the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs), corrected MLEs, weighted MLEs, maximum product spacing estimators and least squares estimators. We also proposed the use of a censored estimation method with one-step bias-correction to obtain reliable initial estimates for iterative procedures. These methods are compared via a Monte Carlo simulation study in terms of their biases, root mean squared errors and their rates of obtaining reliable estimates. Recommendations are made from the simulation results and a numerical example is presented to illustrate all of the methods of inference developed here.

The Cochran–Armitage trend test (CATT) is well suited for testing association between a marker and a disease in case–control studies. When the underlying genetic model for the disease is known, the CATT optimal for the genetic model is used. For complex diseases, however, the genetic models of the true disease loci are unknown. In this situation, robust tests are preferable. We propose a two-phase analysis with model selection for the case–control design. In the first phase, we use the difference of Hardy–Weinberg disequilibrium coefficients between the cases and the controls for model selection. Then, an optimal CATT corresponding to the selected model is used for testing association. The correlation of the statistics used for selection and the test for association is derived to adjust the two-phase analysis with control of the Type-I error rate. The simulation studies show that this new approach has greater efficiency robustness than the existing methods.

In this paper, the estimation of parameters based on a progressively type-I interval censored sample from a two-parameter Weibull distribution is studied. Different methods of estimation are discussed. They include the maximum likelihood estimation, method of moments, estimation based on Weibull probability plot, mid-point approximation method and one-step approximation method. The estimation procedures are discussed in details and compared via Monte Carlo simulations in terms of their biases and mean square errors. Some recommendations are made from the simulation results and a numerical example is presented to illustrate all of the methods of estimation developed here.