[R-sig-ME] Modelling heterogeneity and crossed random effects

ONKELINX, Thierry Thierry.ONKELINX at inbo.be
Wed Aug 18 10:29:48 CEST 2010


Dear Amelie,

Do you expect a common effect of year on all individuals that is not captured by your fixed effects? If not, you do not need to add year as a random effect and only  a random effect of individual will do. Hence you could switch back to nlme which has more features in terms of variance and correlation structures.

HTH,

Thierry

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ir. Thierry Onkelinx
Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek
team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg
Gaverstraat 4
9500 Geraardsbergen
Belgium

Research Institute for Nature and Forest
team Biometrics & Quality Assurance
Gaverstraat 4
9500 Geraardsbergen
Belgium

tel. + 32 54/436 185
Thierry.Onkelinx at inbo.be
www.inbo.be

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.
~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher

The plural of anecdote is not data.
~ Roger Brinner

The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
~ John Tukey
  

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: r-sig-mixed-models-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-sig-mixed-models-bounces at r-project.org] Namens 
> Amelie Lescroel
> Verzonden: woensdag 18 augustus 2010 10:06
> Aan: r-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org
> Onderwerp: Re: [R-sig-ME] Modelling heterogeneity and crossed 
> random effects
> 
> Dear all,
> I did not receive any answer to my questions below. Not that 
> I consider that anybody "owes" me an answer but I would 
> really need advices from people more knowledgeable than I am. 
> Please let me know if I need to reformulate / shorten my 
> questions or examples or if they are too "naïve".
> Best regards,
> Amelie
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-mixed-models-bounces at r-project.org
> [mailto:r-sig-mixed-models-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf 
> Of Amelie Lescroel
> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 10:16 PM
> To: r-sig-mixed-models at r-project.org
> Subject: [R-sig-ME] Modelling heterogeneity and crossed random effects
> 
> Dear all,
> 
>  
> 
> I am currently trying to model the behavioural response of 
> individual seabirds (in terms of foraging efficiency) to the 
> variation in sea ice cover
> (SICdr) of their foraging environment. I have 13 years of 
> data, birds are individually marked and followed, I have 
> several records (= foraging efficiency data = CPUEr in my 
> code) per individual (IDr) for each year
> (YEARr) and individuals are followed across years.
> 
>  
> 
> I am trying to find the right random effect structure 
> (biologically meaningful and dealing with problems of 
> independence) and to deal with heterogeneity of the residual 
> variance at the same time (for all my models, the variance of 
> the residuals increases with increasing fitted values).
> Regarding the random effect structure, would you say that 
> crossed random effects of the form (1|IDr) + (1|YEARr) would 
> correctly reflect the study design? Is there any way to model 
> the variance heterogeneity in lmer that would be analogous to 
> the varIdent or varFixed functions in nlme? So far, I can 
> model the variance heterogeneity with nlme only and the 
> (hopefully) appropriate random effect structure with lmer
> only. Would you have other suggestions for dealing with this 
> heteroscedasticity?
> 
>  
> 
> Here are a couple of examples regarding the random effect 
> structure with some associated questions: 
> 
>  
> 
> > M1 <- lmer(CPUEr~SEXr+SICdr+(1|IDr))
> 
> > summary(M1)
> 
>  
> 
> Linear mixed model fit by REML
> 
> Formula: CPUEr ~ SEXr + SICdr + (1 | IDr) 
> 
>    AIC   BIC logLik deviance REMLdev
> 
>  270.2 297.6 -130.1    234.5   260.2
> 
> Random effects:
> 
>  Groups   Name        Variance Std.Dev.
> 
>  IDr      (Intercept) 0.010906 0.10443 
> 
>  Residual             0.060610 0.24619
> 
> Number of obs: 1759, groups: IDr, 229
> 
>  
> 
> Fixed effects:
> 
>              Estimate Std. Error t value
> 
> (Intercept) 0.3070164  0.0155734  19.714
> 
> SEXrM       0.0961795  0.0195420   4.922
> 
> SICdr       0.0026240  0.0008478   3.095
> 
>  
> 
> Correlation of Fixed Effects:
> 
>       (Intr) SEXrM 
> 
> SEXrM -0.612       
> 
> SICdr -0.478 -0.006
> 
>  
> 
> Here, the correlation between 2 observations from the same 
> individual (irrespective of year) is: 
> 0.010906/(0.010906+0.060610)=0.15
> 
>  
> 
> > M2 <- lmer(CPUEr~SEXr+SICdr+(1|YEARr))
> 
> > summary(M2)
> 
> Linear mixed model fit by REML
> 
> Formula: CPUEr ~ SEXr + SICdr + (1 | YEARr) 
> 
>    AIC   BIC logLik deviance REMLdev
> 
>  117.1 144.5 -53.55     84.8   107.1
> 
> Random effects:
> 
>  Groups   Name        Variance Std.Dev.
> 
>  YEARr    (Intercept) 0.020395 0.14281 
> 
>  Residual             0.059892 0.24473
> 
> Number of obs: 1759, groups: YEARr, 13
> 
>  
> 
> Fixed effects:
> 
>             Estimate Std. Error t value
> 
> (Intercept)  0.36443    0.04367   8.345
> 
> SEXrM        0.10819    0.01175   9.207
> 
> SICdr       -0.00920    0.00192  -4.793
> 
>  
> 
> Correlation of Fixed Effects:
> 
>       (Intr) SEXrM 
> 
> SEXrM -0.134       
> 
> SICdr -0.367  0.009
> 
>  
> 
> Here, the correlation between 2 observations from the same 
> year (irrespective of the bird) is: 
> 0.020395/(0.020395+0.059892)=0.25 How do I get the 
> correlation of 2 observations from the same individual within 
> a year? By modeling CPUEr~SEXr+SICdr+(1|YEARr/IDr)?
> 
>  
> 
> > M3 <- lmer(CPUEr~SEXr+SICdr+(1|YEARr/IDr))
> 
> > summary(M3)
> 
> Linear mixed model fit by REML
> 
> Formula: CPUEr ~ SEXr + SICdr + (1 | YEARr/IDr) 
> 
>    AIC   BIC logLik deviance REMLdev
> 
>  51.29 84.12 -19.64    17.21   39.29
> 
> Random effects:
> 
>  Groups    Name        Variance  Std.Dev.
> 
>  IDr:YEARr (Intercept) 0.0097178 0.09858 
> 
>  YEARr     (Intercept) 0.0188065 0.13714 
> 
>  Residual              0.0500727 0.22377 
> 
> Number of obs: 1759, groups: IDr:YEARr, 543; YEARr, 13
> 
>  
> 
> Fixed effects:
> 
>              Estimate Std. Error t value
> 
> (Intercept)  0.357318   0.042408   8.426
> 
> SEXrM        0.104650   0.014207   7.366
> 
> SICdr       -0.008960   0.001855  -4.831
> 
>  
> 
> Correlation of Fixed Effects:
> 
>       (Intr) SEXrM 
> 
> SEXrM -0.166       
> 
> SICdr -0.365  0.004
> 
>  
> 
> Then, would the correlation of 2 observations from the same 
> individual within a year be 0.0097178/(0.0097178+0.0500727)=0.16?
> 
>  
> 
> My best model (in terms of AIC) so far is the following:
> 
>  
> 
> > M4 <- lmer(CPUEr~SEXr+SICdr+(SICdr|IDr)+(1|YEARr))
> 
> > summary(M4)
> 
> Linear mixed model fit by REML
> 
> Formula: CPUEr ~ SEXr + SICdr + (SICdr | IDr) + (1 | YEARr) 
> 
>    AIC   BIC logLik deviance REMLdev
> 
>  12.88 56.66  1.559   -24.55  -3.119
> 
> Random effects:
> 
>  Groups   Name        Variance   Std.Dev.  Corr   
> 
>  IDr      (Intercept) 8.9314e-03 0.0945058        
> 
>           SICdr       2.3781e-05 0.0048766 -0.464 
> 
>  YEARr    (Intercept) 2.1401e-02 0.1462922        
> 
>  Residual             5.0765e-02 0.2253112        
> 
> Number of obs: 1759, groups: IDr, 229; YEARr, 13
> 
>  
> 
> Fixed effects:
> 
>              Estimate Std. Error t value
> 
> (Intercept)  0.363366   0.045471   7.991
> 
> SEXrM        0.100215   0.017188   5.830
> 
> SICdr       -0.009910   0.001974  -5.021
> 
>  
> 
> Correlation of Fixed Effects:
> 
>       (Intr) SEXrM 
> 
> SEXrM -0.189       
> 
> SICdr -0.357  0.010
> 
>  
> 
> How should I interpret the random effects?
> 
>  
> 
> I am using the R package version 0.999375-31 of lme4 and R 
> version 2.9.2.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks in advance for your help!
> 
>  
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>  
> 
> Amelie
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
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