Assessing the validity of weighted generalized estimating equations

The inverse probability weighted generalized estimating equations approach (Robins et al. 1994; Robins et al. 1995), effectively removes bias and provides valid statistical inference for regression parameter estimation in marginal models when longitudinal data contain missing values. The validity of the weighted generalized estimating equations regarding consistent estimation depends on whether the underlying missing data process is properly modelled. However, there is little work available to examine whether or not this condition holds. In this paper we propose a test constructed from two sets of estimating equations: one set is known to be unbiased, but the other set is not known. We utilize the quadratic inference function (Qu et al. 2000) method to assess their compatibility, which is equivalent to testing for the validity of the weighted generalized estimating equations approach. We conduct simulation studies to assess the performance of the proposed method. The test procedure is illustrated through a real data example. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.