title: Modeling zero-modified count and semicontinuous data in health services research Part 1: background and overview.
abstract: Health services data often contain a high proportion of zeros. In studies examining patient hospitalization rates, for instance, many patients will have no hospitalizations, resulting in a count of zero. When the number of zeros is greater or less than expected under a standard count model, the data are said to be zero modified relative to the standard model. A similar phenomenon arises with semicontinuous data, which are characterized by a spike at zero followed by a continuous distribution with positive support. When analyzing zero-modified count and semicontinuous data, flexible mixture distributions are often needed to accommodate both the excess zeros and the typically skewed distribution of nonzero values. Various models have been introduced over the past three decades to accommodate such data, including hurdle models, zero-inflated models, and two-part semicontinuous models. This tutorial describes recent modeling strategies for zero-modified count and semicontinuous data and highlights their role in health services research studies. Part 1 of the tutorial, presented here, provides a general overview of the topic. Part 2, appearing as a companion piece in this issue of Statistics in Medicine, discusses three case studies illustrating applications of the methods to health services research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors: Department of Public Health Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, U.S.A.. neelon@musc.edu.
authors: Brian
authors: B
authors: Neelon
authors: Department of Biomedical Data Science and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Lebanon, NH 03766, U.S.A.
authors: A James
authors: AJ
authors: O'Malley
authors: Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care, Durham VA Medical Center, Durham, NC 27705, U.S.A.|Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC 27710, U.S.A.
authors: Valerie A
authors: VA
authors: Smith
mesh_terms: D001699:Biometry; D006302:Health Services Research; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical
keywords: health services research; hurdle model; semicontinuous data; two-part model; zero inflation; zero-modified data