Abstract
In health services research, it is common to encounter semicontinuous data characterized by a point mass at zero followed by a continuous distribution with positive support. These are often analyzed using two-part mixtures that separately model the probability of use to account for the portion of the sample with zero values. Commonly, but not always, the second component models the continuous values conditional on them being positive. Prior work examining whether such two-part models are needed to appropriately draw inference from semicontinuous data compared to standard one-part regression models has found mixed results. However, prior studies have generally used only measures of model fit on a single dataset, leaving a definitive conclusion uncertain. This paper provides a detailed evaluation using simulations of the appropriateness of standard one-part generalized linear models (GLMs) compared to a recently developed marginalized two-part (MTP) model. The MTP model, unlike the one-part GLMs, explicitly accounts for the point mass at zero, yet takes the same form for the marginal mean as the commonly used GLM with log link, making the covariate effects directly comparable. We simulate data scenarios with varying sample sizes and percentages of zeros. One-part GLMs resulted in increased bias, lower than nominal coverage of confidence intervals, and inflated type I error rates, rendering them inappropriate for use with semicontinuous data. Even when distributional assumptions were violated, estimates of covariate effects and type I error rates under the MTP model remained robust.
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The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veteran Affairs, Duke University, the Medical University of South Carolina, or the University of North Carolina.
Funding
This work was funded by the Diabetes QUERI and the National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This work was supported by the Center of Innovation for Health Services Research in Primary Care (CIN 13-410) at the Durham VA Medical Center. Dr. Maciejewski is supported by a Research Career Scientist award (RCS 10-391) and a Grant (IIR 10-159) from the VA. The Diabetes QUERI, the National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and the Health Services Research and Development Service, Department of Veterans Affairs had no role in the design, conduct, collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data; or in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
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Dr. Maciejewski owns stock in Amgen due to his spouse’s employment. No other authors have conflicts of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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This study was approved by the institutional review board (including waiver of informed consent) of the Durham VA Medical Center.
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Smith, V.A., Neelon, B., Maciejewski, M.L. et al. Two parts are better than one: modeling marginal means of semicontinuous data. Health Serv Outcomes Res Method 17, 198–218 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10742-017-0169-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10742-017-0169-9