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SAS Notes V6-GENMOD-D998
GEE standard errors inflated when single-observation clusters exist


When you use the REPEATED statement and some clusters contain only one observation (e.g. only one observation per subject), then the correlation matrix is underestimated. The GEE parameter estimates are less statistically efficient resulting in larger standard errors and more conservative tests of these parameters. While some efficiency is lost, the parameter estimates and their standard errors are not incorrect. Clusters are defined by the SUBJECT= effect on the REPEATED statement. The GENMOD output displays the Minimum Cluster Size in the GEE Model Information table. The severity of the underestimation increases with the correlation and the proportion of clusters having only one observation.


Products: STAT
Component: GENMOD
Priority: HIGH
Status: Outstanding Problem
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998

System Release Reported Release Fixed
AIX/6000 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
HP-UX Operating Systems 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
IBM OS/2 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
Solaris 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
OpenVMS Alpha 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
Windows 3.11 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
Windows NT 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
Windows 95 6.12 TS020 6.12 TS055  
Compaq Tru64 Unix 6.12 TS040  
Macintosh 6.12 TS040  

No Fixes Available