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Using Multiple Imputation with GEE with Non-monotone Missing Longitudinal Binary Outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Stuart R. Lipsitz Open the ORCID record for Stuart R. Lipsitz [Opens in a new window] ,
Garrett M. Fitzmaurice  and
Roger D. Weiss
Stuart R. Lipsitz*
Affiliation:
Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Ariadne Labs
Garrett M. Fitzmaurice
Affiliation:
McLean Hospital
Roger D. Weiss
Affiliation:
McLean Hospital
*
Correspondence should be made to Stuart R. Lipsitz, Division of General Internal Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Ariadne Labs, 1620 Tremont St. 3rd Floor, BC3 002D, Boston, MA02120-1613, USA. Email: slipsitz@bwh.harvard.edu
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Abstract

This paper considers multiple imputation (MI) approaches for handling non-monotone missing longitudinal binary responses when estimating parameters of a marginal model using generalized estimating equations (GEE). GEE has been shown to yield consistent estimates of the regression parameters for a marginal model when data are missing completely at random (MCAR). However, when data are missing at random (MAR), the GEE estimates may not be consistent; the MI approaches proposed in this paper minimize bias under MAR. The first MI approach proposed is based on a multivariate normal distribution, but with the addition of pairwise products among the binary outcomes to the multivariate normal vector. Even though the multivariate normal does not impute 0 or 1 values for the missing binary responses, as discussed by Horton et al. (Am Stat 57:229–232, 2003), we suggest not rounding when filling in the missing binary data because it could increase bias. The second MI approach considered is the fully conditional specification (FCS) approach. In this approach, we specify a logistic regression model for each outcome given the outcomes at other time points and the covariates. Typically, one would only include main effects of the outcome at the other times as predictors in the FCS approach, but we explore if bias can be reduced by also including pairwise interactions of the outcomes at other time point in the FCS. In a study of asymptotic bias with non-monotone missing data, the proposed MI approaches are also compared to GEE without imputation. Finally, the proposed methods are illustrated using data from a longitudinal clinical trial comparing four psychosocial treatments from the National Institute on Drug Abuse Collaborative Cocaine Treatment Study, where patients’ cocaine use is collected monthly for 6 months during treatment.

Keywords

fully conditional specificationgeneralized estimating equationsmissing completely at randommissing at randommultivariate normal
Type
Theory and Methods
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 85 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 890 - 904
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

Electronic Supplementary material The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-020-09729-y.

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