Multivariate Linear Mixed Model in lme4

15
votes

I wonder how to fit multivariate linear mixed model with lme4. I fitted univariate linear mixed models with the following code:

library(lme4)
lmer.m1 <- lmer(Y1~A*B+(1|Block)+(1|Block:A), data=Data)
summary(lmer.m1)
anova(lmer.m1)

lmer.m2 <- lmer(Y2~A*B+(1|Block)+(1|Block:A), data=Data)
summary(lmer.m2)
anova(lmer.m2)

I'd like to know how to fit multivariate linear mixed model with lme4. The data is below:

Block A B    Y1    Y2
 1    1 1 135.8 121.6
 1    1 2 149.4 142.5
 1    1 3 155.4 145.0
 1    2 1 105.9 106.6
 1    2 2 112.9 119.2
 1    2 3 121.6 126.7
 2    1 1 121.9 133.5
 2    1 2 136.5 146.1
 2    1 3 145.8 154.0
 2    2 1 102.1 116.0
 2    2 2 112.0 121.3
 2    2 3 114.6 137.3
 3    1 1 133.4 132.4
 3    1 2 139.1 141.8
 3    1 3 157.3 156.1
 3    2 1 101.2  89.0
 3    2 2 109.8 104.6
 3    2 3 111.0 107.7
 4    1 1 124.9 133.4
 4    1 2 140.3 147.7
 4    1 3 147.1 157.7
 4    2 1 110.5  99.1
 4    2 2 117.7 100.9
 4    2 3 129.5 116.2

Thank in advance for your time and cooperation.

3
rlme4
It may be possible to do this by 'melting' the data set (i.e. making Y1 and Y2 separate observations with a common 'ID' variable) and then fitting a model with ID as a random effect. Don't have time to elaborate now. You might want to ask this on the r-sig-mixed-models list. - Ben Bolker
@Ben Bolker: Thanks for your comment. I'm waiting for your reply. Thanks - MYaseen208
I've put up some more details at rpubs.com/bbolker/3336 - Ben Bolker

3 Answers

14
votes

This can sometimes be faked satisfactorily in nlme/lme4 by simply reformatting your data like

require(reshape)
Data = melt(data, id.vars=1:3, variable_name='Y')
Data$Y = factor(gsub('Y(.+)', '\\1', Data$Y))

> Data
  Block A B Y value
1     1 1 1 1 135.8
2     1 1 2 1 149.4
3     1 1 3 1 155.4
4     1 2 1 1 105.9
5     1 2 2 1 112.9
6     1 2 3 1 121.6
...

and then including the new variable Y in your linear mixed model.

However, for true Multivariate Generalized Linear Mixed Models (MGLMM), you will probably need the sabreR package or similar. There is also an entire book to accompany the package, Multivariate Generalized Linear Mixed Models Using R. If you have a proxy to a subscribing institution, you might even be able to download it for free from http://www.crcnetbase.com/isbn/9781439813270. I would refer you there for any further advice, as this is a meaty topic and I am very much a novice.

5
votes

lmer and its elder sibling lme are inherently "one parameter left of ~". Have a look at the car packages; it offers no off-the shelf repeated measurement support, but you will find a few comments on the subject by searching the R list:

John Fox on car package

1
votes

@John's answer above should be largely right. You add a dummy variable (ie--the factor variable Y) to the model. Here you have 3 subscripts i= 1...N for observations, j=1,...,4 for blocks, and h=1,2 for the dependent var. But you also need to force the level 1 error term to 0 (or to near zero), which I'm not sure lme4 does. Ben Bolker might provide more information. This is described more in Goldstein (2011) Chap 6 and Chap 7 for latent multivariate models.

IE

Y_hij = \beta_{01} z_{1ij} + \beta_{02} z_{2ij} + \beta X + u_{1j} z_{1ij} + u_{2j} z_{2ij}

So:

require(reshape2)
Data = melt(data, id.vars=1:3, variable_name='Y')
Data$Y = factor(gsub('Y(.+)', '\\1', Data$Y))

m1 <- lmer(value ~ Y + A*B + (1|Block) + (1|Block*A), data= Data)
# not sure how to set the level 1 variance to 0, @BenBolker
# also unclear to me if you're requesting Y*A*B instead of Y + A*B