A mixed effects model for the analysis of ordinal longitudinal pain data subject to informative drop-out.

We extend the model of Pulkstenis et al. that models binary longitudinal data, subject to informative drop-out through remedication, to the ordinal response case. We present a selection model shared-parameter approach that specifies mixed models for both ordinal response and discrete survival time to remedication. In this fashion, the random parameter present in both models completely characterizes the relationship between response and time to remedication inducing their conditional independence. With a log-log link function for both response and study 'survival', as well as specification of a log-gamma distribution for the random effect, we obtain a closed-form expression for the marginal log-likelihood of response and time to remedication that does not require approximation or numerical integration techniques. A data analysis is performed and simulation results presented which support the consistency of parameter and standard error estimates. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.