Statistical Method to Construct Confidence Sets on Carrion Insect Age from Development Stage

• NCJ Number: 250707
• Author(s): Lynn R. LaMotte, Amanda L. Roe, Jeffrey D. Wells, Leon G. Higley
• Date Published: April 2017
• Length: 13 pages
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Award: Statistical Methods for Combining Multivariate and Categorical Data in Postmortem Interval Estimation; Establishing Blow Fly Development and Sampling Procedures to Estimate Postmortem Intervals

Annotation

This article reports on the application of exact p values, first developed for succession data, to construct a confidence set on a carrion insect’s age based only on its development stage.

Abstract

The age of a carrion insect associated with a corpse may represent a minimum postmortem interval. No method has been proposed before for constructing a confidence set on age based on development stage modeled as a categorical response. The current work uses published development data for Lucilia sericata, with individuals reared at different temperatures pooled into sets of similar age as indexed in accumulated degree hours. Rates of coverage of true ages, assessed using each insect as a singleton holdout sample, were greater than the nominal 95 percent. (Publisher abstract modified)