R package multgee: A generalized estimating equations solver for multinomial responses

The r package multgee implements the local odds ratios generalized estimating equa- tions (gee) approach proposed by touloumis,agresti,and kateri (2013),a gee ap- proach for correlated multinomial responses that circumvents theoretical and practical limitations of the gee method. a main strength of multgee is that it provides gee routines for both ordinal (ordlorgee) and nominal (nomlorgee) responses,while relevant other softwares in r and sas are restricted to ordinal responses under a marginal cumulative link model specication. in addition,multgee offers a marginal adjacent categories logit model for ordinal responses and a marginal baseline category logit model for nominal responses. further,utility functions are available to ease the local odds ratios structure selection (intrinsic.pars) and to perform a wald type goodness-of-fit test between two nested gee models (waldts). we demonstrate the application of multgee through a clinical trial with clustered ordinal multinomial responses. © 2015,american statistical association. all rights reserved.