A Bayesian Approach for Robust Longitudinal Envelope Models

Abstract

The envelope model provides a dimension-reduction framework for multivariate linear regression. However, existing envelope methods typically assume normally distributed random errors and do not accommodate repeated measures in longitudinal studies. To address these limitations, we propose the robust longitudinal envelope model (RoLEM). RoLEM employs a scale mixture of matrix-variate normal distributions to model random errors, allowing it to handle potential outliers, and incorporates flexible correlation structures for repeated measurements. In addition, we introduce new prior and proposal distributions on the Grassmann manifold to facilitate Bayesian inference for RoLEM. Simulation studies and real data analysis demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method.