Smoothed Bootstrap for Right-Censored Data

A smoothed bootstrap method is introduced for right-censored data based on the right-censoring-A((n)) assumption introduced by Coolen and Yan, which is a generalization of Hill's A((n)) assumption for right-censored data. The smoothed bootstrap method is compared to Efron's method for right-censored data through simulations. The comparison is conducted in terms of the coverage of percentile confidence intervals for the quartiles. From the study, it is found that the smoothed bootstrap method mostly performs better than Efron's method, in particular for small data sets. We also illustrate the use of the method for survival function inference and compare it to a smoothed Kaplan-Meier bootstrap method through simulations.