I am using the `glmer` function (`lme4` package) to get estimations in a Poisson regression model (generalized linear model). I wanted to compare the estimations for the fixed effects with those obtained with the `glm` function. I was surprised to see big differences ! I know that `glmer` includes random effect; but that does not suffice to explain theses differences. Could someone explain to me what I missed in my approach ? **EDIT and ANSWER :** Put an `offset` term in both `glm`and `glmer` library(surrosurv) library(survival) library(lme4) data(colon) colon1 = subset(colon, etype == 1) # Poissonization don_pois = poissonize(colon1, interval.width = 365.25, factors = c ('surg', 'rx'), compress = FALSE) names(don_pois)[3] = 'trt'; names(don_pois)[4] = 'trialref' fitpoi_glmer <- glmer( formula = event ~ -1 + interval + ( 1 | trialref ), data = don_pois, family = poisson(link = "log") ) fitpoi_glm <- glm( formula = event ~ -1+ interval + offset(log(time)), data = don_pois, family = poisson(link = "log") ) summary(fitpoi_glmer)$coefficients summary(fitpoi_glm)$coefficients # Survival graphics fixed.coef.glmer = summary(fitpoi_glmer)$coefficients[,'Estimate'] risks0 = exp(fixed.coef.glmer[grep("(?!.*:)interval.*", names(fixed.coef.glmer), perl = T)]) * 365.25 surv0 <- c(1,exp(-cumsum(risks0))) x = seq(0, max(colon1$time), length.out = length(surv0)) plot(x, surv0, type ='l', col = 'blue', lwd = 2) risks3 = exp(coef(fitpoi_glm)[grep("(?!.*:)interval.*", names(coef(fitpoi_glm)), perl = T)]) * 365.25 surv3 <- c(1,exp(-cumsum(risks3))) lines(x, surv3, type ='l', col = 'pink', lwd = 2) # Comparison with survfit lines(survfit(Surv(time, status)~1, data = colon1 ), lty = 2, conf.int= FALSE)