Doubly robust estimation, optimally truncated inverse-intensity weighting and increment-based methods for the analysis of irregularly observed longitudinal data

Longitudinal data arising from routine follow-up of patients will often have irregular measurement times. Existing methods for analysis include joint modelling of the outcome and measurement processes, and inverse-intensity weighting (IIW). This work extends previously proposed analysis of increments to the case of irregular follow-up, yielding a model for the increments that can be used as a stand-alone method. Furthermore, we propose two ways of combining the increments and IIW estimators. First, we use the increment model to select the truncation point for the inverse-intensity weights that minimises the mean squared error of the IIW estimator. Second, we use the increment model to augment the usual IIW estimating equations to form a doubly robust estimator. We evaluate the methods through simulation and apply these to a recent study of juvenile dermatomyositis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.