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Mixtures Of Varying Coefficient Models For Longitudinal Data With Discrete Or Continuous Non-Ignorable Dropout, Joseph W. Hogan, Xihong Lin, Benjamin A. Herman

The University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

The analysis of longitudinal repeated measures data is frequently complicated by missing data due to informative dropout. We describe a mixture model for joint distribution for longitudinal repeated measures, where the dropout distribution may be continuous and the dependence between response and dropout is semiparametric. Specifically, we assume that responses follow a varying coefficient random effects model conditional on dropout time, where the regression coefficients depend on dropout time through unspecified nonparametric functions that are estimated using step functions when dropout time is discrete (e.g., for panel data) and using smoothing splines when dropout time is continuous. Inference under the …