Flexible multivariate marginal models for analyzing multivariate longitudinal data, with applications in R

Most of the available multivariate statistical models dictate on fitting different parameters for the covariate effects on each multiple responses. This might be unnecessary and inefficient for some cases. In this article, we propose a modelling framework for multivariate marginal models to analyze multivariate longitudinal data which provides flexible model building strategies. We show that the model handles several response families such as binomial, count and continuous. We illustrate the model on the Kenya Morbidity data set. A simulation study is conducted to examine the parameter estimates. An R package mmm2 is proposed to fit the model. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.