Tests based on intrinsic priors for the equality of two correlated proportions

Correlated proportions arise in longitudinal (panel) studies. A typical example is the “opinion swing” problem: “Has the proportion of people favoring a politician changed after his recent speech to the nation on TV?” Because the same group of individuals is interviewed before and after the speech, the two proportions are correlated. A natural null hypothesis to be tested is whether the corresponding population proportions are equal. A standard Bayesian approach to this problem has already been considered in the literature, based on a Dirichlet prior for the cell probabilities of the underlying 2 × 2 table under the alternative hypothesis, together with an induced prior under the null. With a lack of specific prior information, a diffuse (e.g., uniform) distribution may be used. We claim that this approach is not satisfactory, because in a testing problem one should make sure that the prior under the alternative is adequately centered around the region specified by the null, in order to obtain a fairer comparison between the two hypotheses, especially when the data are in reasonable agreement with the null. Following an intrinsic prior methodology, we develop two strategies for the construction of a collection of objective priors increasingly peaked around the null. We provide a simple interpretation of their structure in terms of weighted imaginary sample scenarios. We illustrate our method by means of three examples, carrying out sensitivity analysis and providing comparison with existing results.