Abstract

Correlated data are very common in the social sciences. Most common applications include longitudinal and hierarchically organized (or clustered) data. Generalized estimating equations (GEE) are a convenient and general approach to the analysis of several kinds of correlated data. The main advantage of GEE resides in the unbiased estimation of population-averaged regression coefficients despite possible misspecification of the correlation structure. This article aims to provide a concise, nonstatistical introduction to GEE. To illustrate the method, an analysis of selectivity effects in the Swiss Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on the Oldest Old is presented.