# How to fit a mixed model with response variable between 0 and 1?

I am trying to use lme4::glmer() to fit a binomial generalized mixed model (GLMM) with dependent variable that is not binary, but a continuous variable between zero and one. One can think of this variable as a probability; in fact it is probability as reported by human subjects (in an experiment that I help analyzing). I.e. it's not a "discrete" fraction, but a continuous variable.

My glmer() call doesn't work as expected (see below). Why? What can I do?

Later edit: my answer below is more general than the original version of this question, so I modified the question to be more general too.

More details

Apparently it is possible to use logistic regression not only for binary DV but also for continuous DV between zero and one. Indeed, when I run

glm(reportedProbability ~ a + b + c, myData, family="binomial")


I get a warning message

Warning message:
In eval(expr, envir, enclos) : non-integer #successes in a binomial glm!


but a very reasonable fit (all factors are categorical, so I can easily check whether model predictions are close to the across-subjects-means, and they are).

However, what I actually want to use is

glmer(reportedProbability ~ a + b + c + (1 | subject), myData, family="binomial")


It gives me the identical warning, returns a model, but this model is clearly very much off; the estimates of the fixed effects are very far from the glm() ones and from the across-subject-means. (And I need to include glmerControl(optimizer="bobyqa") into the glmer call, otherwise it does not converge at all.)

• How about transforming the probabilities first? Can you get something that's closer to normally distributed with say, a logit transformation? Or the arcsin-sqrt? That would be my preference rather than using glmer. Or in your hack solution, you could also try adding a random effect for each observation to account for underdispersion due to your choice of weights. Sep 5, 2016 at 14:27
• Thanks. Yes, I can logit the DV and then use Gaussian mixed model (lmer), but this is also a kind of hack, and I've read that it's not recommended. I will try a random effect for each observation! At the moment, I am trying beta mixed model; lme4 cannot handle it, but glmmadmb can. When I run glmmadmb(reportedProbability ~ a + b + c + (1 | subject), myData, family="beta"), I get correct fit and reasonable confidence intervals, but a convergence failed warning :-/ Trying to figure out how to increase the number of iterations. Beta might work for me because I don't have DV=0 or DV=1 cases. Sep 5, 2016 at 14:32
• I don' t know for glmer but for glm this may help: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/164120/…:
– user83346
Sep 5, 2016 at 14:53
• @Aaron: I tried adding + (1 | rowid) to my glmer call and this yields stable estimates and stable confidence intervals, independent of my weight choice (I tried 100 and 500). I also tried running lmer on logit(reportedProbability) and I get almost exactly the same thing. So both solutions seem to work well! Beta MM with glmmadmb gives also very close results, but for some reason fails to converge completely and takes forever to run. Consider posting an answer listing these options and explaining a bit the differences and pros/cons! (Confidence intervals that I mention are all Wald.) Sep 5, 2016 at 14:57
• And they are absolutely certain about their value like 0.9, or do they also have some ''error margin on it''? Can you assume that confidence reported by different subjects are equally precise?
– user83346
Sep 5, 2016 at 15:07

### It makes sense to start with a simpler case of no random effects.

There are four ways to deal with continuous zero-to-one response variable that behaves like a fraction or a probability (this is our most canonical/upvoted/viewed thread on this topic, but unfortunately not all four options are discussed there):

1. If it is a fraction $p=m/n$ of two integers and all $n$s are known, then one can use standard logistic regression, aka binomial GLM. One way to code it in R is (assuming that n is a vector of $N$ values for each data point):

glm(p ~ a+b+c, myData, family="binomial", weights=n)

2. If $p$ is not a fraction of two integers, then one can use beta regression. This will only work if the observed $p$ is never equal to $0$ or $1$. If it is, then more complicated zero/one-inflated beta models are possible, but this becomes more involved (see this thread).

betareg(p ~ a+b+c, myData)

3. Logit transform the response and use linear regression. This is usually not advised.

lm(log(p/(1-p)) ~ a+b+c, myData)

4. Fit a binomial model but then compute standard errors taking over-dispersion into account. The standard errors can be computed in various ways:

• (a) scaled standard errors via the overdispersion estimate (one, two). This is called "quasi-binomial" GLM.

• (b) robust standard errors via the sandwich estimator (one, two, three, four). This is called "fractional logit" in econometrics.

The (a) and (b) are not identical (see this comment, and sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 in this book, and this SO post and also this one and this one), but tend to give similar results. Option (a) is implemented in glm as follows:

glm(p ~ a+b+c, myData, family="quasibinomial")


### The same four ways are available with random effects.

1. Using weights argument (one, two):

glmer(p ~ a+b+c + (1|subject), myData, family="binomial", weights=n)


According to the second link above, it might be a good idea to model overdispersion, see there (and also #4 below).

2. Using beta mixed model:

glmmadmb(p ~ a+b+c + (1|subject), myData, family="beta")


or

glmmTMB(p ~ a+b+c + (1|subject), myData,


If there are exact zeros or ones in the response data, then one can use zero/one-inflated beta model in glmmTMB.

3. Using logit transform of the response:

lmer(log(p/(1-p)) ~ a+b+c + (1|subject), myData)

4. Accounting for overdispersion in the binomial model. This uses a different trick: adding a random effect for each data point:

myData\$rowid = as.factor(1:nrow(myData))
glmer(p ~ a+b+c + (1|subject) + (1|rowid), myData, family="binomial",
glmerControl(optimizer="bobyqa"))


For some reason this does not work properly as glmer() complains about non-integer p and yields nonsense estimates. A solution that I came up with is to use fake constant weights=k and make sure that p*k is always integer. This requires rounding p but by selecting k that is large enough it should not matter much. The results do not seem to depend on the value of k.

k = 100
glmer(round(p*k)/k ~ a+b+c + (1|subject) + (1|rowid), myData,
family="binomial", weights=rowid*0+k, glmerControl(optimizer="bobyqa"))


Later update (Jan 2018): This might be an invalid approach. See discussion here. I have to investigate this more.

In my specific case option #1 is not available.

Option #2 is very slow and has issues with converging: glmmadmb takes five-ten minutes to run (and still complains that it did not converge!), whereas lmer works in a split-second and glmer takes a couple of seconds. Update: I tried glmmTMB as suggested in the comments by @BenBolker and it works almost as fast as glmer, without any convergence issues. So this is what I will be using.

Options #3 and #4 yield very similar estimates and very similar Wald confidence intervals (obtained with confint). I am not a big fan of #3 though because it is kind of cheating. And #4 feels somewhat hacky.

Huge thanks to @Aaron who pointed me towards #3 and #4 in his comment.

• Nice answer, well explained and connected with the no random effects models. I wouldn't call #3 (the transformation) cheating though, those kinds of transformations are very common in analyses like these. I'd say instead that both #3 and #4 are making assumptions about the relationship about the distribution of the data, and so also about the relationship between the mean and variance, and just because #4 is modeling on the scale that the data was collected on doesn't mean those assumptions are going to be better. Sep 6, 2016 at 17:46
• #3 assumes the logit of the probabilities are normal with constant variance, while #4 assumes the variance is proportional to p(1-p). From your description of the fit, these seem to be similar enough to not matter too much. And #3 is almost certainly more standard (depending on your audience) so if the diagnostics are reasonable, that's the one I would prefer. Sep 6, 2016 at 17:48
• another possibility is to use glmmTMB; after installing with devtools::install_github("glmmTMB/glmmTMB",sub="glmmTMB"), using glmmTMB(p ~ a+b+c + (1|subject), myData, family=list(family="beta",link="logit")) should work ... Sep 6, 2016 at 18:29
• @BenBolker Thanks! Is there any reason to prefer glmmTMB to glmmADMB (for beta models) or vice versa? Is one of these packages more recent or more actively developed? Apart from that, may I ask what approach among the ones listed in this answer -- gaussian glmm after logit transform, beta glmm, or binomial glmm with (1|rowid) term -- do you find generally preferable? Sep 6, 2016 at 19:52
• I prefer the beta GLMM if feasible - it's the statistical model that's intended to measure changes in proportions across covariates/groups. glmmTMB is faster and more stable than glmmADMB, and under (slightly) more active development, although not as mature. Sep 6, 2016 at 19:58