Piecewise exponential models to assess the influence of job-specific experience on the hazard of acute injury for hourly factory workers

Background An inverse relationship between experience and risk of injury has been observed in many occupations. Due to statistical challenges, however, it has been difficult to characterize the role of experience on the hazard of injury. In particular, because the time observed up to injury is equivalent to the amount of experience accumulated, the baseline hazard of injury becomes the main parameter of interest, excluding Cox proportional hazards models as applicable methods for consideration.