Getting an interaction plot from a pooled lme model with mids object - r

Question

Preface - I really hope this makes sense!
I ran a linear-mixed effect model using an imputed dataset (FYI, the data is a mids object imputed using mice). The model has a three-way interaction with 3 continuous variables. I am now trying to plot the interaction using the interactions::interact_plot function. However, I'm receiving an error when I run the plot code, which I believe is due to the fact that the model came from a mids object and not a data frame. Does anyone know how to address this error or if there's a better way to get the plot that I'm trying to get?
Thanks very much in advance!
MIDmod1 <- with(data = df.mids, exp = lmer(GC ~ Age + Sex + Edu + Stress*Time*HLI + (1|ID)))
summary(pool(MIDmod1))
interact_plot(
model=MIDmod1,
pred = Time,
modx=Stress,
mod2=HLI,
data = df.mids,
interval=TRUE,
y.label='Global cognition composite score',
modx.labels=c('Low Baseline Stress (-1SD)','Moderate Baseline Stress (Mean)', 'High Baseline Stress (+1SD)'),
mod2.labels=c('Low HLI (-1SD)', 'Moderate HLI (Mean)', 'High HLI (+1SD)'),
legend.main='') + ylim(-2,2)
Error:
Error in rep(1, times = nrow(data)) : invalid 'times' argument
Note - I also get an error if I don't include the data argument (optional argument for this function).
Error in formula.default(object, env = baseenv()) : invalid formula
BTW - I am able to generate the plot when the model comes from a data frame - an example of what this should look like is included here: 1

Answer 1

Sorry, but it won’t be that easy. Multiple imputation object will definitely require special treatment, and none of the many R packages which can plot interactions are likely to work out of hte box.
Here’s a minimal example, adapted from the multiple imputation vignette of the marginaleffects package. (Disclaimer: I am the author.)
library(mice)
library(lme4)
library(ggplot2)
library(marginaleffects)
# insert missing data in an existing dataset and impute
iris_miss <- iris
iris_miss$Sepal.Width[sample(1:nrow(iris), 20)] <- NA
iris_mice <- mice(iris_miss, m = 20, printFlag = FALSE, .Random.seed = 1024)
iris_mice <- complete(iris_mice, "all")
# fit a model on 1 imputed datatset and use the `plot_predictions()` function
# with the `draw=FALSE` argument to extract the data that we want to plot
fit <- function(dat) {
mod <- lmer(Sepal.Width ~ Petal.Width * Petal.Length + (1 | Species), data = dat)
out <- plot_predictions(mod, condition = list("Petal.Width", "Petal.Length" = "threenum"), draw = FALSE)
# `mice` requires a unique row identifier called "term"
out$term <- out$rowid
class(out) <- c("custom", class(out))
return(out)
}
# `tidy.custom()` is needed by `mice` to combine datasets, but the output of fit() also has
# the right structure and column names, so it is useless
tidy.custom <- function(x, ...) return(x)
# Fit on each imputation
mod_mice <- lapply(iris_mice, fit)
# Pool
mod_pool <- pool(mod_mice)$pooled
# Merge back some of the covariates
datplot <- data.frame(mod_pool, mod_mice[[1]][, c("Petal.Width", "Petal.Length")])
# Plot
ggplot(datplot, aes(Petal.Width, estimate, color = Petal.Length)) +
geom_line() +
theme_minimal()