Direct and flexible marginal inference for semicontinuous data

Stat Methods Med Res. 2017 Dec;26(6):2962-2965. doi: 10.1177/0962280215602290. Epub 2015 Sep 1.

Abstract

The marginalized two-part (MTP) model for semicontinuous data proposed by Smith et al. provides direct inference for the effect of covariates on the marginal mean of positively continuous data with zeros. This brief note addresses mischaracterizations of the MTP model by Gebregziabher et al. Additionally, the MTP model is extended to incorporate the three-parameter generalized gamma distribution, which takes many well-known distributions as special cases, including the Weibull, gamma, inverse gamma, and log-normal distributions.

Keywords: Generalized gamma; log-skew normal; marginalized models; two-part models; zero-inflation.

MeSH terms

  • Biostatistics / methods
  • Data Interpretation, Statistical
  • Humans
  • Models, Statistical*
  • Regression Analysis