Testing for event clustering with recurring event data, preferably in R

Question

Thanks for all the help you've been over the years.

Basically I have a set of data where about 200 individuals were tracked for a number of years and I know when an event occurred during that period. The event can occur more than once for the same individual. Looking at the data I notice that events seem to be clustering together (i.e. if an individual experiences the event once, they're likely to experience it 2 or 3 times within a month), how would I formally test that?

Appreciated!

Answer 1

In this multiple failure-time framework a

• Cox`s proportional hazards regression model with
• PWP model or AG model extension is appropriate.
• If the risk of occurrence of the following events is affected by the previous ones then use PWP model
• If the events that occur have the same risk of occurence then use AG model.

In this free available paper both methods a explained https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4339761/