Hello all,

I am using GEE to estimate my dependent variable. The dependent variable has a lower bound of 0 (its observed value, not censored or truncated) and can take on larger values as well. However, in my dataset, there are a lot of zeros for the dependent variable (about 80% of the time). Would it be acceptable to run a linear GEE model here? (assuming that I probe my results using alternative approaches). From what I understand, GEE is a quasi-likelihood estimator and it has weaker distributional assumptions, so my thoughts were that this would be okay, but I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts. Though to be clear, I am interested in using and defending this approach for my analysis purposes.

Thank you in advance!