I set up a multilevel model in R with the lme4-package to test different effects on social participation in primary school classes. Now I assume that the effects of academic performance (sp) and emotional-social competence (es) vary between classes, which is why I set up a model with random effects. Now I want to test those random slopes.
This is my model (don’t wonder, In my model, other variables – such as gender, migration background and the teacher’s attitude – are included):
mod3 <- lmer(
social_t1 ~ 1 + sex + mig + sl.c + es.c + attitude + (1 + sl.c + es.c|class),
data = kommschreib_ak,
na.action = na.exclude
)
summary(mod3)
The problem is that R only outputs the variances and not the p-value, which I want to have.
I have already found out how I can test the two slopes individually in a model (via anova-test), but not together in one. So I want to have a significance test that gives me a p-value for both academic performance and emotional-social competence for my model, which contains both random slopes.
Is there any chance I can do it in R?
My colleague has done this in MPlus so far. And since we assume that the random effects influence each other, we get different results when I test the effects individually.
0
To test the random variation in sl.c and es.c jointly I think you want:
mod3B <- update(mod3,
. ~ . - (1 + sl.c + es.c|class) + (1|class)
)
anova(mod3, mod3B)
Note that the likelihood ratio test (which is what anova() does) is technically not applicable [it gives strongly conservative results] when testing hypotheses corresponding to parameters on the boundary of the feasible set (i.e., the variances can be zero, but they can’t be negative). The RLRsim package is designed for these kinds of tests.