Survival Analysis Regression Models Overview

A common research question in medical, biological, or engineering (failure time) research is to determine whether or not certain continuous (independent) variables are correlated with the survival or failure times. There are two following major reasons due to which this research issue cannot be addressed through the straightforward multiple regression techniques (as available in Multiple Regression):

  1. The dependent variable of interest (survival/failure time) is most likely not normally distributed - a serious violation of an assumption for ordinary least squares multiple regression. Survival times usually follow an exponential or Weibull distribution.
  2. There is the problem of censoring, that is, some observations might be incomplete.