Stractural Priors for Bayesian Analysis of Complete and Incomplete Contingency Tables

In the Bayesian analysis of contingency tables، analysts commonly use special prior distributions for the parameters of log-linear models or the cell probabilities. But، in practice، sometimes there is some interpretive information which is rather on (generalized) odds ratios. So، it seems one will need a powerful approach so that he can model his prior believe on (generalized) odds ratios. Here، we refer to these priors as structural priors. In this paper we first introduce the general pattern of the structural priors. Then، since these priors have vast application in clinical trials and especially in the analysis of 2 x 2 complete and incomplete contingency tables، we obtain the corresponding structural priors، separately، under three conditions.