Estimating and Testing a Structured Covariance Matrix for Three-Level Multivariate Data

Abstract

This article considers an approach to estimating and testing a new Kronecker product covariance structure for three-level (multiple time points (p), multiple sites (u), and multiple response variables (q)) multivariate data. Testing of such covariance structure is potentially important for high dimensional multi-level multivariate data. The hypothesis testing procedure developed in this article can not only test the hypothesis for three-level multivariate data, but also can test many different hypotheses, such as blocked compound symmetry, for two-level multivariate data as special cases. The tests are implemented with two real data sets.