A test for the presence of stochastic ordering under censoring: the k-sample case

In this paper, we develop an empirical likelihood-based test for the presence of stochastic ordering under censoring in the k-sample case. The proposed test statistic is formed by taking the supremum of localized empirical likelihood ratio test statistics. Its asymptotic null distribution has a simple representation in terms of a standard Brownian motion process. Through simulations, we show that it outperforms in terms of power existing methods for the same problem at all the distributions that we consider. A real-life example is used to illustrate the applicability of this new test.