Lecture bioinformatic databases - Wednesday - Mixed models

12 important questions on Lecture bioinformatic databases - Wednesday - Mixed models

What is wide format?

All measurements of a person at one line

When to use wide or long format?

Wide = easy to calculate differences and increments
Long =  easier if unequal number of measurements per person

How to change from wide to long format in SPSS (or vice versa)?

Data -> restructure
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What is important for residuals? (ANOVA and linear regression)

Independent most important (no pattern,), but also normally distributed and variance should be the same

What if residual is not distributed normally / not independent?

Correct with dummy terms

What is a cluster?

Dependent groups of observations
--> weight of puppies is more similar within litter

How many dummy variables do you need?

N-1, so if there are for example 95 studentnrs you want to correct for, you need 94 new terms in the equation (one is the reference)

What is the difference between random and fixed effects?

Fixed effects are the variables in the research question. For example, when looking to sex and weight the length and weight are fixed effects.

Random effects are the effects of the dummy variables you may add (abbreviated to bi in the equation). A high variance for the dummy variable, means that correction was needed. You compare the variance of the dummy variable with the residual, dummy > residuals means that correction was correct

What if you ignore the non-independence of the residuals?

Standard errors become smaller and thus the confidence intervals become smaller. This results in smaller p values

When to use a random effect and when a fixed effect?

Fixed when the number of levels is fixed -> when making study larger, the number of clusters does not change.
But when there are a lot of clusters (also with countries), you should use random effects. Because the cluster effects would be different when repeating the study. With a few countries (3) the cluster effects are expected to be the same, then it is a fixed effect

Sometimes mixed models are too complicated, what is then an admissible solution?

Reduce each cluster to a single observation. --> slope of regression line or intercept.

Advantages:
- simple analysis
- easy to interpret
- might be more robust

Disadvantages:
- information might be lost (power decreases, but not always)
- sometimes difficult to reduce

What do you need to include in the equation when time trends differ between groups (different slopes)?

An interaction coefficient => group x time interaction, lenght x age interaction etc...

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