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  • GEE count model including negative binomial and the selection of best model

    Dear Statalist,
    Hi, this is my first time Statalist forum. I am not familiar to GEE or not too much strong in statistics. I appreciate if you could consider my question.
    I would like to ask about GEE for count models. I have repeated measure data. The purpose of analysis is to see whether there is difference in outcome (number of conditions) experienced between intervention (group=2) and control (group=1) groups. The sample size is n=103, with around equal numbers between groups. 'visit' is the number of measurement occasions (3 times). I consider 'ar1' as the suitable correlation structure (I compared working correlation and actual correlation). The outcome is the count of condition, but around 50-70% of respondent did not experience any condition and therefore there are many 0s at each occasion. Also, variance exceeds mean for 2-7 times at each occasion.
    I checked the fit of count model using 'countfit' command (using cross-sectional analysis using baseline, not as repeated measure), and either zero-inflated negative binomial or negative binomial regression appeared to be most suitable.
    Reading this earlier statalist forum (http://www.stata.com/statalist/archi.../msg01187.html) and other UCLA resource, I tried to see below family and link combinations. I am not sure whether this makes sense, and also I am not sure whether the interpretation differs by the different combination?
    xtgee outcome i.group i.visit i.group#i.visit, fam(nbinomial) link(nbinomial) i(ID) t(visit) corr(ar1) eform
    xtgee outcome i.group i.visit i.group#i.visit, fam(nbinomial) link(log) i(ID) t(visit) corr(ar1) eform
    xtgee outcome i.group i.visit i.group#i.visit, fam(poisson) link(log) i(ID) t(visit) corr(ar1) eform
    The results were a little different according to the combination:

    First model: IRR =0.53, SE=0.192, z=-1.76 p=0.079 CI(0.26 1.08)
    Second model: IRR =0.40, SE=1.196, z= -1.88, p=0.059, CI(0.15 1.04)
    Third model: IRR =0.40, SE=0.167, z=-2.20, p=0.028, CI(0.17 0.90)

    I used a user written command 'qic' to see which model is best. While I do not think Poisson is suitable given overdispersion, the QIC value is the smallest for Poisson+log combination (QIC=271), indicating the better model fit. Other two specifications were similar (QIC = 280 for the First model and QIC=281 for the Second model).

    Thank you so much for your time.
    Best wishes,
    Ayako
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