Multiple imputation in SAS for longitudinal data

Question

I have a data set from a repeated measurement study comparing two groups with missing data due to lost-to-follow-up (~20%).

I know how to apply multiple imputation method for cross-sectional data. For repeated measurement (longitudinal data) the situation is a lot more complex because we need to make use of the correlation between the Y values across time-points. STATA can do this using the ICE procedure http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/faq/mi_longitudinal.htm. But I cannot work out how to do this in SAS. I am grateful if someone can help.

Answer 1

There is an SAS macro called MMI_IMPUTE specifically designed for MI of clustered data. In addition, Mistler (2013) has written a nice tutorial that shows how to use this macro. The article is available online and should be accessible to all.

Mistler, S. A. (2013). A SAS macro for applying multiple imputation to multilevel data. In Proceedings of the SAS global forum: 2013.

Answer 2

I suggest that you don't use MMI_IMPUTE. MMI_IMPUTE uses an imputation algorithm called PAN, which was developed a while back by Joseph Schafer. Unfortunately, PAN is a bit outdated, and is less flexible than newer algorithms (e.g., the algorithm can't incorporate random effects between incomplete variables; all incomplete variables are required to be normally distributed).

I recommend that you instead use a standalone software package called Blimp. Blimp was written by Brian Keller and Craig Enders at UCLA. Unlike MMI_IMPUTE, Blimp can handle random effects between incomplete variables and can also impute some non-normal incomplete variables (e.g., binary variables). The software and associated documentation are available at http://www.appliedmissingdata.com/multilevel-imputation.html. Blimp is free, and the website contains scripts for using it from SAS.