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A related question was asked on this thread How to calculate percentage difference of geometric means with emmeans?, but I still need some help.

Instead of calculating the absolute difference between two groups, I would like to calcuate the percentage change between these groups from the model estimates. This is the model (I am using brms)

chla_full_model.brm = bf(Chl_a_avg_std ~ 1 + Stage*Treatment + Sample_date + Avg_length_std + (1|Mesocosm))

For each treatment I would like to calculate the percentage change of Chl_a_avg_std between stages. There are 4 stages (1,2,3,4), and I am only interested in the percentage change between stage 1 and 2, 2 and 3....an so forth. This my code currently

chla.emm <- emmeans(chla_full.model, ~ Stage|Treatment)
chla.cont = contrast(chla.emm, 
                 list('Stage1 vs. Stage2' = c(-1, 1, 0, 0),
                    'Stage2 vs. Stage3 ' = c(0, -1, 1, 0),
                    'Stage3 vs. Stage4 ' = c(0,0, -1, 1)))

The gives me the absolute difference between my contrasts, but I would like to obtain percentage change. My understanding from the previous thread is that I need to create a custom scale function through the 'tran' argument in the contrast function. There is an example given in a vignette associated with emmeans package, but my coding skills and understanding are rudimentary, and I havent been able to workout how to solve my problem. Any help would be much appreciated.

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  • $\begingroup$ Welcome to cv, mrmic1! (1)Could you explain what you mean by percentage change (a number example, eg. Stage 1 = 80, stage 2 = 100 => 25%?) (2) And could you give a bit background: what does "chl_a_avg_std" represent, in real world terms? $\endgroup$
    – Ute
    Aug 22 at 5:42
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks @Ute. Data comes from a mesocosm study where we measured a range of community metrics at different different stages of the experiment. Chla_a_avg_std is chlorophyll a concentration and the variable has been standardized to help with model implementation. So basically, all I want to do is estimate the percentage change (increase or decrease) between sequential stages (1 v 2, 2 v 3 etc.). As in your example, the model predicted average of chl_a in Stage 1 might be 80, and stage 2 its 100, so there was a 25% increase. But I want to calcluate this using the model predictions and emmeans $\endgroup$
    – mrmic1
    Aug 25 at 0:51

1 Answer 1

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Do this:

contrast(regrid(chla.emm, "log"), "consec", type = "response")

The regrid part transforms the estimates to the log scale. The "consec" spec is shorthand for what you specified, and type = "response" back-transforms the differences from the log scale to the response scale (difference of logs are logs of ratios).

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