# emmeans pairwise contrasts result in same output values for all?

First of all, I am a beginner at mixed models, so I beg your patience and advice if this post could be improved.

The structure of the data:

> str(data)
'data.frame':   44 obs. of  5 variables:
$$colony : Factor w/ 3 levels "1","2","3": 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...$$ condition: Factor w/ 2 levels "filter","pre": 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 ...
$$location : Factor w/ 3 levels "AN","AM","AS": 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 ...$$ trial    : Factor w/ 4 levels "1","2","3","4": 2 2 3 3 4 4 1 1 2 2 ...
\$ ninety   : int  3658 616 797 824 580 405 915 476 1445 620 ...


There were three ant colonies in the study, and the measurements were repeated on each colony, treatment, and location multiple times (but in the end were unbalanced, some colonies had fewer repeat trials than others). The response variable, "ninety", is in elapsed seconds.

The mixed-effects model: I used the lme4 package in R: > model <- lmer(log(ninety) ~ condition + location + (1 |colony), data = data, REML = FALSE)

Mixed Model output

> summary(finallogninetybuffermodel)
## Linear mixed model fit by maximum likelihood . t-tests use
##   Satterthwaite's method [lmerModLmerTest]
## Formula: log(ninety) ~ condition + location + (1 | colony)
##    Data: buffer
##
##      AIC      BIC   logLik deviance df.resid
##     78.0     88.7    -33.0     66.0       38
##
## Scaled residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max
## -1.5606 -0.6441 -0.2184  0.5658  3.3769
##
## Random effects:
##  Groups   Name        Variance Std.Dev.
##  colony   (Intercept) 0.2360   0.4858
##  Residual             0.2174   0.4662
## Number of obs: 44, groups:  colony, 3
##
## Fixed effects:
##                 Estimate Std. Error      df t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)       6.0443     0.3093  4.0027  19.539 4.03e-05 ***
## conditionfilter  -0.5491     0.1406 41.1101  -3.906 0.000342 ***
## locationAM        0.3927     0.1699 41.4570   2.312 0.025831 *
## locationAS        0.2638     0.1844 41.9729   1.431 0.159922
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
## Correlation of Fixed Effects:
##             (Intr) cndtnf lctnAM
## conditnfltr -0.227
## locationAM  -0.230  0.000
## locationAS  -0.212  0.000  0.455


Emmeans post-hoc pairwise contrasts:

posthoccondloc <- emmeans(finallogninetybuffermodel, lmer.df =
"satterthwaite", specs = "condition", by = "location")


The locations in the summary (below) show different standard errors and confidence limits, but for the pairwise contrasts by location, all the output values, for each location, are the same, but they look different on the bar-arrow plot. Why might that be? I've read everything I could find about lme4 and emmeans online, but I still can't figure it out.

> summary(posthoccondloc, adjust = "bonferroni")
## location = AN:
##  condition   emmean        SE   df lower.CL upper.CL
##  pre       6.044318 0.3093493 4.00 4.963388 7.125248
##  filter    5.495213 0.3093493 4.00 4.414283 6.576143
##
## location = AM:
##  condition   emmean        SE   df lower.CL upper.CL
##  pre       6.436980 0.3168496 4.38 5.377601 7.496360
##  filter    5.887875 0.3168496 4.38 4.828496 6.947255
##
## location = AS:
##  condition   emmean        SE   df lower.CL upper.CL
##  pre       6.308155 0.3248875 4.81 5.264069 7.352240
##  filter    5.759050 0.3248875 4.81 4.714964 6.803135
##
## Degrees-of-freedom method: satterthwaite
## Results are given on the log (not the response) scale.
## Confidence level used: 0.95
## Conf-level adjustment: bonferroni method for 2 estimates

> contrast(posthoccondloc, pairwise = TRUE, adjust = "bonferroni")
## location = AN:
##  contrast        estimate         SE    df t.ratio p.value
##  pre effect     0.2745525 0.07028776 41.11   3.906  0.0007
##  filter effect -0.2745525 0.07028776 41.11  -3.906  0.0007
##
## location = AM:
##  contrast        estimate         SE    df t.ratio p.value
##  pre effect     0.2745525 0.07028776 41.11   3.906  0.0007
##  filter effect -0.2745525 0.07028776 41.11  -3.906  0.0007
##
## location = AS:
##  contrast        estimate         SE    df t.ratio p.value
##  pre effect     0.2745525 0.07028776 41.11   3.906  0.0007
##  filter effect -0.2745525 0.07028776 41.11  -3.906  0.0007
##
## Results are given on the log (not the response) scale.
## P value adjustment: bonferroni method for 2 tests


emmeans Graphs

 > emmip(posthoccondloc, condition ~ location)


 > plot(posthoccondloc, comparisons = TRUE)


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• I am not sure what null hypotheses are corresponding to the p values generated by "contrast(posthoccondloc, pairwise = TRUE, adjust = "bonferroni")". Could you figure them out? Oct 11, 2018 at 21:09
• My null hypothesis was that the "filter" and "pre" conditions would be the same at each location along the trail. As rvl points out below, I should have included the interaction term for condition:location, since that was the case. Thanks for that clarifying question. Oct 24, 2018 at 15:45

You have fitted an additive model - the fixed-effects part is condition + location. Therefore you have in fact specified that the differences for one factor are exactly the same at each level of the other factor. Since emmeans() summarizes a model, then, lo and behold, the results reflect what is specified.
If instead you include the interaction between condition and location in the model, then the emmeans() results will reflect the possibility that factor levels compare differently at levels of the other factor.