Invariance principles for von Mises and U-statistics

Summary The almost sure approximation of von Mises-statistics and U-statistics by appropriate stochastic integrals with respect to Kiefer processes is obtained. In general these integrals are non-Gaussian processes. As applications we get almost sure versions for the estimator of the variance and for the ²-test of goodness of fit.This work was done while the last author was a visiting professor at the Institut für Mathematische Stochastik at the University of Göttingen during the Spring of 1982. He thanks the Institut and its members for their hospitality