A unified approach to estimating association measures via a joint generalized linear model for paired binary data

Paired binary data arise frequently in biomedical studies with unique features of their own. For instance, in clinical studies involving pairs such as ears, eyes etc., often both the intrapair association parameter and the event probability are of interest. In addition, we may be interested in the dependence of the association parameter on certain covariates as well. Although various methods have been proposed to model paired binary data, this paper proposes a unified approach for estimating various intrapair measures under a generalized linear model with simultaneous maximum likelihood estimates of the marginal probabilities and the intrapair association. The methods are illustrated with a twin morbidity study.