The Development of Web-based Graphical User Interface for Learning and Fitting Generalized Estimating Equation with Spline Smoothers

Abstract

Statistical modeling (regression analyses) have been growing rapidly into various directions to accommodate various data conditions. For longitudinal or repeated measures data, one of the suitable models is GEE (Generalized Estimating Equation). In practice, to do complex modeling such as GEE, the use of statistical software is necessary and it is available on free open source software R. However, GEE modeling on R can only be access through command line interface (CLI), and most practical researchers very much rely on Graphical User Interface (GUI) based statistics software. To make access to GEE (both order 1 and 2) much easier, we developed, using Shiny toolkit, two types of web-based GUI, standard pull down menu type and e-module type (with narrative theories) that can be utilized for learning and fitting GEE. This paper discusses the features of the interfaces and illustrates the use of them.

Keywords: longitudinal data, Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE), exponential families, statistical modeling, correlated response, nonparametric, natural splines, shiny toolkit