International Statistical Review has recently published a special issue. The issue, “Contributions to Longitudinal Studies”, honoring Prof. Nan Laird’s International Prize in Statistics 2021 (90:S1) includes one lead article by Prof Laird and five invited papers on topics inspired by the career of Professor Nan Laird.  A portion of the foreword by Co-Editor in Chief’s  Scott H. Holan and Nalini Ravishanker is included below: 

In “Statistical analysis of longitudinal studies“, Prof Laird summarises the use of linear mixed models, which was popularised in Laird and Ware (1982) and other papers for the analysis of broad classes of data/designs. Additionally, this article discusses various applications of these models in health and medicine.

In “Likelihood-Based Inference for the Finite Population Mean with Post-Stratification Information Under Non-Ignorable Non-Response“, Zangeneh and Little introduce likelihood-based inference for the finite population mean with post-stratification under non-ignorable nonresponse and method application to school-level data from California Department of Education to estimate the mean academic performance index (API) score in years 1999 and 2000. 

In “A joint normal-binary (probit) model“,  co-authors Delporte, Fieuws, Molenberghs, Verbeke, Wanyama, Hatziagorou and De Boeck, consider a joint normal-binary (probit) model and method application in a case study of the lung function and allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis in patients with cystic fibrosis. 

In “A Legacy of EM Algorithms“, Lange and Zhou provide an overview of EM algorithms, an area that was jump-started by the well-known paper by Dempster, Laird and Rubin (1972) that appeared in JRSS B. 

In “Synergy of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in Air Pollution Health Effects Studies” (OPEN ACCESS),  Dockery presents a historical perspective surrounding the coordinated developments of statistical methods and epidemiological designs for air pollution health effect studies championed by Prof Laird and colleagues. 

In “Global seasonal and pandemic patterns in influenza: An application of longitudinal study designs“, Naumova, Simpson, Zhou and Hartwick focus on an application of longitudinal study designs for global seasonal and pandemic patterns in influenza; with results offering directions for further improvements in data collection, reporting, analysis and development of statistical methodology and predictive approaches.

The theme of this special issue is focused on methods and applications pioneered by Prof Nan Laird. The 2021 International Prize in Statistics for ‘Methods of Analyzing Data from Longitudinal Studies’ was  awarded to Professor Nan Laird at the (virtual) ISI WSC 2021, where she presented a video lecture on ‘Contributions to Longitudinal Studies’.