--- title: "Comparing Different Multilevel Bootstrapping Methods" author: "Mark Lai" date: "`r Sys.Date()`" output: rmarkdown::html_vignette vignette: > %\VignetteIndexEntry{Comparing Different Multilevel Bootstrapping Methods} %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown} %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8} --- ## Data Here I use a synthetic dataset (`pop_syn`) bundled with the package, which mimics the structure of the example data in Hox (2010, p. 17). The synthetic data was generated from parameters estimated from the original *popular* dataset. ```{r setup, include=FALSE} knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, message = FALSE) comma <- function(x) format(x, digits = 2, big.mark = ",") # Load the pre-computed heavy bootstrap objects to save CRAN build time. # These were generated locally and saved to the vignettes directory. load("precomputed_bootstraps.rda") ``` ```{r} library(dplyr) library(lme4) library(boot) library(bootmlm) ``` For the interest of time, I will select only 30 schools and a few students in each school: ```{r} set.seed(85957) pop_sub <- pop_syn |> filter(school %in% sample(unique(school), 30)) |> group_by(school) |> sample_frac(size = .25) |> ungroup() ``` To illustrate doing bootstrapping to obtain standard error (*SE*) and confidence interval (CI) for the intraclass correlation (ICC) of the variable `popular`, we first fit an intercept only model: ```{r} m0 <- lmer(popular ~ (1 | school), data = pop_sub) summary(m0) ``` The intraclass correlation is defined as $$ \rho = \frac{\tau}{\tau + \sigma^2} = \frac{1}{1 + \sigma^2 / \tau} = \frac{1}{1 + \theta^{-2}}, $$ where $\theta = \sqrt{\tau} / \sigma$ is the relative cholesky factor for the random intercept term used in `lme4`. Therefore, we can estimate the ICC as: ```{r} (icc0 <- 1 / (1 + getME(m0, "theta")^(-2))) ``` So the ICC is quite large for this data set. However, it is important to also quantify the uncertainty of a point estimate. Although there are analytic methods to obtain *SE* and CI for ICC, a reliable alternative is to do bootstrapping. We first define the function for computing the test statistic: ```{r} icc <- function(x) 1 / (1 + x@theta^(-2)) icc(m0) ``` Note that I used the `@` operator for faster extraction. With the `bootmlm` package we can perform various bootstrap methods using the `bootstrap_mer()` function. ## Parametric Bootstrap We can run parametric bootstrap, which essentially call the `lme4::bootMer()` function. It's usually recommended to have a large number of bootstrap samples ($R$), especially for CIs with higher confidence levels. For illustrative purpose I will use $R = 999$, but in general 1,999 or more is recommended ```{r, eval=FALSE} system.time( boo_par <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "parametric") ) boo_par ``` ```{r, echo=FALSE} # Outputting the pre-computed object boo_par ``` As you can see, the *SE* for the ICC is estimated to be `r sd(boo_par$t)` with parametric bootstrap. ### Confidence interval With parametric bootstrap there are three ways to construct confidence intervals via the `boot.ci()` function from the `boot` package: normal, basic, and percentile. We can use the following function: ```{r} boo_par_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_par, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc"), index = 1L) boo_par_ci ``` ## Residual Bootstraps Whereas parametric bootstrap resamples from independent normal distributions, residual bootstrap samples the residuals. Therefore, residual bootstrap is expected to be more robust to non-normality. `bootmlm` implements three methods for residual bootstrap: differentially reflated residual bootstrap, Carpenter-Goldstein-Rashbash's residual bootstrap (CGR; Carpenter et al., 2003), and transformational residual bootstrap by van der Leeden, Meijer, and Busin (2008). They are all motivated by the fact that the residuals, generally empirical bayes estimates (denoted as $\tilde u$ and $\tilde e$), are shrinkage estimates and have sampling variabilities much smaller than the population random effects, $u$ and $e$. The first residual bootstrap rescale $\tilde u$ and $\tilde e$ so that their sampling variabilities match those of $u$ and $e$ as implied by the model estimates. This can be obtained by ```{r, eval=FALSE} system.time( boo_res <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "residual") ) boo_res ``` ```{r, echo=FALSE} boo_res ``` As you can see, the *SE* for the ICC is estimated to be `r sd(boo_res$t)` with residual bootstrap. The second method, CGR, rescale the sample covariance matrix of the *realized values* of the residuals to match the model-implied variance components. This can be obtained by ```{r, eval=FALSE} system.time( boo_cgr <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "residual_cgr") ) boo_cgr ``` ```{r, echo=FALSE} boo_cgr ``` The *SE* is estimated to be `r sd(boo_cgr$t)` with CGR bootstrap. The third method first transforms the OLS residuals, $\hat r_{ij} = y_{ij} - \boldsymbol{x}_{ij} \hat{\boldsymbol{\beta}}$, by the inverse of cholesky factor, $\boldsymbol{L}$, of the model-implied covariance matrix of $\boldsymbol{y}$, $\hat{\boldsymbol{V}}$, so that theoretically $\boldsymbol{L}^{-1} (\boldsymbol{y} - \boldsymbol{X \beta})$ should be independent and identically distributed. However, as the true sampling variance of $\hat r_{ij}$ is not $\boldsymbol{V}$, I also provide the option `corrected_trans = TRUE` to do the transformation using the theoretically sampling variability of $\hat r_{ij}$. ```{r, eval=FALSE} # Transformation according to V system.time( boo_tra <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "residual_trans") ) boo_tra # Transformation according to the sampling variance of r system.time( boo_trac <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "residual_trans", corrected_trans = TRUE) ) boo_trac ``` ```{r, echo=FALSE} boo_tra boo_trac ``` The *SE* is estimated to be `r sd(boo_tra$t)` and `r sd(boo_trac$t)` with and without corrections with the transformational residual bootstrap. ### Confidence interval With residual bootstrap methods there are four ways to construct confidence intervals via the `boot.ci()` function from the `boot` package, with the addition of the bias-corrected and accelarted bootstrap (BCa). We can use the following function: ```{r} # First need to compute the influence values inf_val <- empinf_mer(m0, icc, index = 1) # Residual bootstrap boo_res_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_res, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_res_ci # CGR boo_cgr_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_cgr, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_cgr_ci # Transformational (no correction) boo_tra_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_tra, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_tra_ci # Transformational (with correction) boo_trac_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_trac, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_trac_ci ``` ## Random Effect Block Bootstrap ```{r, eval=FALSE} system.time( boo_reb <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "reb") ) boo_reb system.time( boo_rebs <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "reb", reb_scale = TRUE) ) boo_rebs ``` ```{r, echo=FALSE} boo_reb boo_rebs ``` ### Confidence interval ```{r} # Only sampling clusters boo_reb_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_reb, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_reb_ci # Transformational (with correction) boo_rebs_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_rebs, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_rebs_ci ``` ## Case Bootstrap With case bootstrap, the observed *cases* are sampled with replacement. However, because of the multilevel structure, we need to resample the clusters. Optionally, we can then resample the cases within each cluster (using the `lv1_resample = TRUE` argument). Unlike the parametric and residual bootstrap methods, currently `bootmlm` only support the case bootstrap with two levels. ```{r, eval=FALSE} system.time( boo_cas <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "case") ) boo_cas system.time( boo_cas1 <- bootstrap_mer(m0, icc, nsim = 999L, type = "case", lv1_resample = TRUE) ) boo_cas1 ``` ```{r, echo=FALSE} boo_cas boo_cas1 ``` The *SE* for the ICC is estimated to be `r sd(boo_cas$t)` (only sampling clusters) and `r sd(boo_cas1$t)` (sampling also cases) with case bootstrap. ### Confidence interval With case bootstrap the supported CIs are: normal, basic, and percentile, and BCa. We can use the following function: ```{r} # Only sampling clusters boo_cas_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_cas, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_cas_ci # Transformational (with correction) boo_cas1_ci <- boot::boot.ci(boo_cas1, type = c("norm", "basic", "perc", "bca"), index = 1L, L = inf_val) boo_cas1_ci ``` ## Summary ```{r} boo_names <- c("parametric", "residual", "cgr", "trans", "trans (cor)", "REB", "REB (scaled)", "case (cluster)", "case (c + i)") boo_lst <- list(boo_par, boo_res, boo_cgr, boo_tra, boo_trac, boo_reb, boo_rebs, boo_cas, boo_cas1) boo_ci_lst <- list(boo_par_ci, boo_res_ci, boo_cgr_ci, boo_tra_ci, boo_trac_ci, boo_reb_ci, boo_rebs_ci, boo_cas_ci, boo_cas1_ci) get_ci <- function(boo_ci, type) { paste0("(", paste(comma(tail(boo_ci[[type]][1, ], 2L)), collapse = ", "), ")") } tab <- tibble(boot_type = boo_names, boo = boo_lst, boo_ci = boo_ci_lst) |> mutate(sd = sapply(boo, \(x) comma(sd(x$t))), normal = sapply(boo_ci, \(x) get_ci(x, "normal")), basic = sapply(boo_ci, \(x) get_ci(x, "basic")), percentile = sapply(boo_ci, \(x) get_ci(x, "percent")), bca = sapply(boo_ci, \(x) get_ci(x, "bca"))) |> select(-boo, -boo_ci) knitr::kable(tab) ```