A semi-parametric approach for imputing mixed data

作者:Helenowski Irene B*; Demirtas Hakan
来源:Statistics and Its Interface, 2013, 6(3): 399-412.
DOI:10.4310/sii.2013.v6.n3.a11

摘要

In this work, we present a semi-parametric method for imputing mixed data which allows us to relax assumptions of the general location model. This approach involves transforming continuous and binary variables to normally distributed data, imputing the data via joint modeling under the normality assumption, and back-transforming the data to their original scale. Transformation and back-transformation of the data comprise the nonparametric portion, and multiple imputation under the normality assumption constitutes the parametric portion of our method. Simulations involving generated mixed data with binary variables and with continuous variables following normal, t, Gamma, and mixture Gamma distributions and real data applications indicate promising results, leading us to recommend our approach as a possible avenue for imputing mixed data by semi-parametric means.