New Hazard Function Estimator of Performance Time

摘要

The analysis of performance time is used to study a wide variety of manpower, training, and human factors problems in the Navy. The cumulative distribution of performance time provides some indication of the rate of performance, but it can lead to false conclusions as well. One method of measuring the rate of performance with a shifting residual basis of analysis, called hazard analysis, consists of estimating a hazard function, which shows the rate of performance as a function of time. Although various procedures have been developed for estimating a hazard function, none of the procedures has been shown to produce plausibly smooth and precise estimates under a variety of conditions. This research proposed a constrained quadratic spline as an estimator or the hazard function of performance time. A maximum penalized likelihood procedure was used to fit the estimator to a sample of psychological response times. The procedure was also used in a simulation study of the precision of the estimator.