R: lmer coding for a (random) discontinuous time for all subjects with multiple treatments - r

I have a set of data that came from a psychological experiment where subjects were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions and their wellbeing w measured on six different occasions. The exact day of measurement on each occasion differs slightly from subject to subject. The first measurement occasion for all subjects is day zero.
I analyse this with lmer :
model.a <- lmer(w ~ day * treatment + (day | subject),
REML=FALSE,
data=exper.data)
Following a simple visual inspection of the change-trajectories of subjects, I'd now like to include (and examine the effect of including) the possibility that the slope of the line for each subject changes at a point mid-way between measurement occasion 3 and 4.
I'm familiar with modeling the alteration in slope by including an additional time-variable in the lmer specification. The approach is described in chapter 6 ('Modeling non-linear change') of the book Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis by Singer and Willett (2005). Following their advice, for each measurement, for each subject, there is now an additional variable called latter.day. For measurements up to measurement 3, the value of latter.day is zero; for later measurements, latter.day encodes the number of days after day 40 (which is the point at which I'd like to include the possible slope-change).
What I cannot see is how to adjust the lmer coding of the examples in the Singer and Willett cases to suit my own problem ... which includes the same point-of-slope-change for all subjects as well as a between-subjects factor (treatment). I'd appreciate help on how to write the specification for lmer.

Related

Diagnostic plots fail with LMMs

I've been working on the following problem recently: We sent 18 people, 9 each, several times to two different clubs "N" and "O". These people arrived at the club either between 8 and 10 am (10) or between 10 and 12 pm (12). Each club consists of four sectors with ascending price classes. At the end of each test run, the subjects filled out a questionnaire reflecting a score for their satisfaction depending on the different parameters. The aim of the study is to find out how satisfaction can be modelled as a function of the club. You can download the data as csv for one week with this link (without spaces): https: // we.tl/t-I0UXKYclUk
After some try and error, I fitted the following model using the lme4 package in R (the other models were singular, had too strong internal correlations or higher AIC/BIC):
mod <- lmer(Score ~ Club + (1|Sector:Subject) + (1|Subject), data = dl)
Now I wanted to create some diagnostic plots as indicated here.
plot(resid(mod), dl$Score)
plot(mod, col=dl$Club)
library(lattice)
qqmath(mod, id=0.05)
Unfortunately, it turns out that there are still patterns in the residuals that can be attributed to the club but are not captured by the model. I have already tried to incorporate the club into the random effects, but this leads to singularities. Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can deal with these patterns in the residuals? Thank you!

GLMM: Needing overall advice on selecting model terms for glmm modelling in R

I would like to create a model to understand how habitat type affects the abundance of bats found, however I am struggling to understand which terms I should include. I wish to use lme4 to carry out a glmm model, I have chosen glmm as the distribution is poisson - you can't have half a bat, and also distribution is left skewed - lots of single bats.
My dataset is very big and is comprised of abundance counts recorded by an individual on a bat survey (bat survey number is not included as it's public data). My data set includes abundance, year, month, day, environmental variables (temp, humidity, etc.), recorded_habitat, surrounding_habitat, latitude and longitude, and is structured like the set shown below. P.S Occurrence is an anonymous recording made by an observer at a set location, at a location a number of bats will be recorded - it's not relevant as it's from a greater dataset.
occurrence
abundance
latitude
longitude
year
month
day
(environmental variables
3456
45
53.56
3.45
2000
5
3
34.6
surrounding_hab
recorded_hab
A
B
Recorded habitat and surrounding habitat range in letters (A-I) corresponding to a habitat type. Also, the table is split as it wouldn't fit in the box.
These models shown below are the models I think are a good choice.
rhab1 <- glmer(individual_count ~ recorded_hab + (1|year) + latitude + longitude + sun_duration2, family = poisson, data = BLE)
summary(rhab1)
rhab2 <- glmer(individual_count ~ surrounding_hab + (1|year) + latitude + longitude + sun_duration2, family = poisson, data = BLE)
summary(rhab2)
I'll now explain my questions in regards to the models I have chosen, with my current thinking/justification.
Firstly, I am confused about the mix of categorical and numeric variables, is it wise to include the environmental variables as they are numeric? My current thinking is scaling the environmental variables allowed the model to converge so including them is okay?
Secondly, I am confused about the mix of spatial and temporal variables, primarily if I should include temporal variables as the predictor is a temporal variable. I'd like to include year as a random variable as bat populations from one year directly affect bat populations the next year, and also latitude and longitude, does this seem wise?
I am also unsure if latitude and longitude should be random? The confusion arises because latitude and longitude do have some effect on the land use.
Additionally, is it wise to include recorded_habitat and surrounding_habitat in the same model? When I have tried this is produces a massive output with a huge correlation matrix, so I'm thinking I should run two models (year ~ recorded_hab) and (year ~ surrounding_hab) then discuss them separately - hence the two models.
Sorry this question is so broad! Any help or thinking is appreciated - including data restructuring or model term choice. I'm also new to stack overflow so please do advise on question lay out/rules etc if there are glaringly obvious mistakes.

How do I code a Mixed effects model for abalone growth in Aquaculture nutrition with nested individuals

I am a biologist working in aquaculture nutrition research and until recently I haven't paid much attention to the power of statistics. The usual method of analysis had been to run ANOVA on final weights of animals given various treatments and boom, you have a result. I have tried to improve my results by designing an experiment that could track individuals growth over time but I am having a really hard time trying to understand which model to use for the data I have.
For simplified explanation of my experiment: I have 900 abalone/snails which were sourced from a single cohort (spawned/born at the same time). I have individually marked each abalone (id) and recorded a length and weight at Time 0. The animals were then randomly assigned 1 of 6 treatment diets (n=30 abalone per treatment) each replicated n=5 times (n=150 abalone / replicate). Each replicate looks like a randomized block design where each treatment is only replicate once within each block and each is assigned to independent tank with n=30 abalone/tank (n treatment). Abalone were fed a known amount of feed for 90 days before being weighed and measured again (Time 1). They are back in their homes for another 90 days before the concluding the experiment.
From my understanding:
fixed effects - Time, Treatment
nested random effects - replicate, id
My raw data entered is in Long format with each row being a unique animal and columns for Time (0 or 1), Replicate (1-5), Treatment (1-6), Sex (M or F) Animal ID (1-900), Length (mm), Weight (g), Condition Factor (Weight/Length^2.99*5655)
I have used columns from my raw data and converted them to factors and vectors before using the new variables to create a data frame.
id<-as.factor(data.long[,5])
time<-as.factor(data.long[,1])
replicate<-as.factor(data.long[,2])
treatment<-data.long[,3]
weight<-as.vector(data.long[,7])
length<-as.vector(data.long[,6])
cf<-as.vector(data.long[,10])
My data frame is currently in the following structure:
df1<-data.frame(time,replicate,treatment,id,weight,length,cf)
I am struggling to understand how to nest my individual abalone within replicates. I can convert the weight data to change from initial but I think the package nlme already accounts this change when coded correctly. I could also create another measure of Specific Growth Rate for each animal at Time 1 but this would not allow the Time factor to be used.
lme(weight ~ time*treatment, random=~1 | id, method="ML", data=df1))
I would like to structure a mixed effects model so that my code takes into account the individual animal variability to detect statistical differences in their weight at Time 1 between treatments.

How to add level2 predictors in multilevel regression (package nlme)

I have a question concerning multi level regression models in R, specifically how to add predictors for my level 2 "measure".
Please consider the following example (this is not a real dataset, so the values might not make much sense in reality):
date id count bmi poll
2012-08-05 1 3 20.5 1500
2012-08-06 1 2 20.5 1400
2012-08-05 2 0 23 1500
2012-08-06 2 3 23 1400
The data contains
different persons ("id"...so it's two persons)
the body mass index of each person ("bmi", so it doesn't vary within an id)
the number of heart problems each person has on a specific day ("count). So person 1 had three problems on August the 5th, whereas person 2 had no difficulties/problems on that day
the amount of pollutants (like Ozon or sulfit dioxide) which have been measured on that given day
My general research question is, if the amount of pollutants effects the numer of heart problems in the population.
In a first step, this could be a simple linear regression:
lm(count ~ poll)
However, my data for each day is so to say clustered within persons. I have two measures from person 1 and two measures from person 2.
So my basic idea was to set up a multilevel model with persons (id) as my level 2 variable.
I used the nlme package for this analysis:
lme(fixed=count ~ poll, random = ~poll|id, ...)
No problems so far.
However, the true influence on level 2 might not only come from the fact that I have different persons. Rather it would be much more likely that the effect WITHIN a person might come from his or her bmi (and many other person related variables, like age, amount of smoking and so on).
To make a longstory short:
How can I specify such level two predictors in the lme function?
Or in other words: How can I setup a model, where the relationship between heart problems and pollution is different/clustered/moderated by the body mass index of a person (and as I said maybe additionally by this person's amount of smoking or age)
Unfortunately, I don't have a clue, how to tell R, what I want. I know oif other software (one of them called HLM), which is capable of doing waht I want, but I'm quite sure that R can this as well...
So, many thanks for any help!
deschen
Short answer: you do not have to, as long as you correctly specify random effects. The lme function automatically detects which variables are level 1 or 2. Consider this example using Oxboys where each subject was measured 9 times. For the time being, let me use lmer in the lme4 package.
library(nlme)
library(dplyr)
library(lme4)
library(lmerTest)
Oxboys %>% #1
filter(as.numeric(Subject)<25) %>% #2
mutate(Group=rep(LETTERS[1:3], each=72)) %>% #3
lmer(height ~ Occasion*Group + (1|Subject), data=.) %>% #4
anova() #5
Here I am picking 24 subjects (#2) and arranging them into 3 groups (#3) to make this data balanced. Now the design of this study is a split-plot design with a repeated-measures factor (Occasion) with q=9 levels and a between-subject factor (Group) with p=3 levels. Each group has n=8 subjects. Occasion is a level-1 variable while Group is level 2.
In #4, I did not specify which variable is level 1 or 2, but lmer gives you correct output. How do I know it is correct? Let us check the multi-level model's degrees of freedom for the fixed effects. If your data is balanced, the Kenward–Roger approximation used in the lmerTest will give you exact dfs and F/t-ratios according to this article. That is, in this example dfs for the test of Group, Occasion, and their interaction should be p-1=2, q-1=8, and (p-1)*(q-1)=16, respectively. The df for the Subject error term is (n-1)p = 21 and the df for the Subject:Occasion error term is p(n-1)(q-1)=168. In fact, these are the "exact" values we get from the anova output (#5).
I do not know what algorithm lme uses for approximating dfs, but lme does give you the same dfs. So I am assuming that it is accurate.

3 way anova nested in r

I'm trying to figure out the model for a fully factorial experiment.
I have the following factors
Treatment Day Hour Subject ResponseVariable
10 days of measurements, 4 different time points within each day, 2 different treatments measured, 12 subjects )6 subjects within treatment 1, and 6 different subjects in treatment 2)
for each day I measured: 6 subjects in treatment 1, the other 6 in treatment 2, at 4 different time points.
For Subjects, I have 12 different subjects, but Subjects 1-6 are in Treatment-1 and Subjects 7-12 are in Treatment-2. The subjects did not change treatments, thus I measured the same set of subjects for each treatment each of the 10 days
So what's tripping me up is specifying the correct error term.
I thought I had the general model down but R is giving me "Error() model is singular"
aov(ResponseVariable ~ T + R + S + TR + TS + RS + Error(T/S)
any thoughts would help?
I've gotten the same error, and I think my problem was missing observations. Are you missing any observations? I believe they're less of a problem for linear mixed effects, and I've read that some people use lme instead of repeated-measures ANOVA for those cases.
Your error term can be interpreted as "the S effect within each T". It sounds from your description as though that's what you want, so I don't think that's what's causing your error message.
One note: I see you've got a variable named "T". R let you do that? T is normally reserved for meaning "TRUE". That might be part of your problem.

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