Weighted logistic regression and robust analysis of diverse toxicology data

Simpson, Carroll, Zhou and Guth (1996) developed an ordinal response regression approach to meta-analysis of data from diverse toxicology studies, applying the methodology to a database of acute inhalation studies of tetrachloroethylene. We present an alternative analysis of the same data, with two major differences: (1) interval censored scores are assigned worst-case values, e.g., a score known to be in the interval [0, 1] is set equal to 1; and (2) the response is reduced to a binary response (adverse, nonadverse). We explore the stability of the analysis by varying a robustness parameter and graphing the curves traced out by the estimates and confidence intervals.