Inference for longitudinal data with nonignorable nonmonotone missing responses.

For the analysis of longitudinal data with nonignorable and nonmonotone missing responses, a full likelihood method often requires intensive computation, especially when there are many follow-up times. The authors propose and explore a Monte Carlo method, based on importance sampling, for approximating the maximum likelihood estimators. The finite-sample properties of the proposed estimators are studied using simulations. An application of the proposed method is also provided using longitudinal data on peptide intensities obtained from a proteomics experiment of trauma patients.