A pseudo likelihood approach to analyze rate difference of binary response data in longitudinal factorial studies

摘要

Although Fan showed that the mixed-effects model for repeated measures (MMRM) is appropriate to analyze complete longitudinal binary data in terms of the rate difference, they focused on using the generalized estimating equations (GEE) to make statistical inference. The current article emphasizes validity of the MMRM when the normal-distribution-based pseudo likelihood approach is used to make inference for complete longitudinal binary data. For incomplete longitudinal binary data with missing at random missing mechanism, however, the MMRM, using either the GEE or the normal-distribution-based pseudo likelihood inferential procedure, gives biased results in general and should not be used for analysis.