[R-meta] stepadj argument ignored in an rma.mv model

[Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP)]

Just as a follow-up for those who are interested.

The problem here stems from using a call such as:

res <- rma.mv(yi, V, random = ~ 1 | mydata$study, data=mydata)

namely, using 'mydata$' in the 'random' argument. This is actually superfluous (rma.mv() will find 'study' inside 'mydata' with no problems). While the model fit works, this causes some problems with profile(). Making this work is not an easy fix. But the obvious fix is to just fit the model with:

res <- rma.mv(yi, V, random = ~ 1 | study, data=mydata)

and then profile(res) works just fine.

I have now actually added a check inside rma.mv() that catches uses of $ in the random argument and, if so, issues an error. If I come up with a solution for making things work even with $ inside 'random', I'll remove this check.

Best,
Wolfgang

-----Original Message-----
From: Viechtbauer, Wolfgang (SP) 
Sent: Tuesday, 07 May, 2019 23:34
To: 'Danka Puric'
Cc: r-sig-meta-analysis using r-project.org
Subject: RE: [R-meta] stepadj argument ignored in an rma.mv model

Well, that fails spectacularly. Not a single successful fit across all 20 sigma^2 values (all ll values are NA). This is a bit surprising, since the actual estimate of sigma^2 is 0 and even for this value the profiling fails. I can't tell if this is a problem with the profile() function or due to a model that is so overparameterized that all bets are off. Would you be willing to send me the data so I can do some more testing to figure out what is going on?

Best,
Wolfgang