Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Role of Misclassification Estimates in Estimating Disease Prevalence and a Non-linear Approach to Study Synchrony Using Heart Rate Variability in Chickens
Abstract
Infectious disease assays can be imperfect. When estimating disease prevalence, these imperfections are accounted for by incorporating assay sensitivity and specificity into point and variance estimates. Unfortunately, these accuracy measures are often treated as fixed constants, rather than acknowledging that they are estimates from an assay validation process. The purpose of this study is to show the detrimental effect of not taking into account this sampling variability when samples are obtained through group testing (aka, pooled testing). We show that confidence interval coverage can dramatically decline as the sample size increases for the main sample of interest. As a remedy for this problem, we propose a new confidence interval which takes into account the extra sampling variability. This new interval is shown to obtain coverage near the nominal level. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been used to study stressed induced reaction in humans, and mammal, in general, using non-linear analysis. Studies have also been done to establish synchrony in humans. Non-linear analysis of HRV using recurrence and cross recurrence plots, recurrence and cross recurrence quantification analysis, have also been done to study the feather pecking behavior in chickens. The main purpose of this study is to see if the human study on the degree of synchrony can be replicated for the avian population. If such synchrony exists in the avian population, then it will establish that the degree of synchrony is a primal instinct. Female leghorn chickens were used in the study as they have similar cardiac structure but are evolutionarily distant from mammals. If the presence of synchrony can be established for cagemate hens, it might lead to significant improvement in poultry well-being.
Subject Area
Statistics
Recommended Citation
Pathak, Dola, "Role of Misclassification Estimates in Estimating Disease Prevalence and a Non-linear Approach to Study Synchrony Using Heart Rate Variability in Chickens" (2018). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI13418804.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI13418804