I'm analysing longitudinal panel data, in which individuals transition between different states in a Markov chain. I'm modelling the transition rates between states using a series of multinomial logistic regressions. This means that I end up with a very large number of regression slopes.
For each regression slope, I obtain a posterior distribution (using WinBUGS). From the posterior distribution, we get the mean, standard deviation, and 95% credible interval associated with the slope in question.
The value I am ultimately interested in is the expected first passage time ('hitting time') through the Markov chain. This is a function of all the different predictor variables, and so is built from the many regression slopes produced by the multinomial logistic regressions.
A simple approach would be to take the mean of each posterior distribution as a point-estimate for each regression slope, and solve for the expected first passage time at a series of different values of the predictor variables. I have now done this, but it is potentially misleading because it doesn't show the uncertainty around the predicted values of expected first passage time.
My question is: how can I calculate a credible interval for the expected first passage time?
My first thought was to approximate the error via simulation, by sampling individual values for the regression slopes from each posterior distribution, obtaining the expected first passage time given those values, and then plotting the standard deviation of all these simulated values. However, I feel like (a) this would make a statistician scream and (b) it doesn't take into account the fact that different posterior distributions will be correlated (it samples from each one independently).
In WinBUGS, you can actually obtain the correlations between the posterior distributions. So if the simulation idea is appropriate, I could in theory simulate the regression slope coefficients incorporating these correlations.
Is there a more direct and less approximate way to find the uncertainty? Could I, for instance, use WinBUGS to find the posterior distribution of the expected first passage time for a given set of values of the predictor variables? Rather like the answer to this question: define a new node and monitor it. I would imagine defining a series of new nodes, where each one is for a different set of actual predictor values, and monitoring each one. Does this make good statistical sense?
Any thoughts about this would be really appreciated!
