Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2005 / iii / Paper 44 / 1 / b / Solution

Assume independent individuals and independent censoring: conditional on any modelled covariates, the censoring mechanism gives no additional information about the latent event time and has no parameter shared with its survival distribution. An observed event at $x_i$ contributes the probability density function $f(x_i)$. A right-censored observation contributes the survivor function $F(x_i)$, since it establishes only $T_i>x_i$.

More formally, let $C_i$ be an independent censoring time with density $c_i$ and survivor function $G_i$. The observed pair $X_i=\min (T_i,C_i)$, $v_i=1_{\{T_i\le C_i\}}$ has a parameter-dependent factor $f(x_i)G_i(x_i)$ if $v_i=1$ and $F(x_i)c_i(x_i)$ if $v_i=0$. The factors involving only the censoring distribution can be omitted from the event-time likelihood. ThusUsing $f=hF$ also gives the useful survival likelihood formEvery individual therefore contributes survival exposure, whether or not an event is observed. These formulas do not justify ignoring informative censoring; that situation requires a model for the observation mechanism as well.