PROC GLIMMIX not converging! WARNING: Obtaining minimum variance quadratic unbiased estimates as starting values for the covariance parameters failed.

[Val40106]

Help!

PROC GLIMMIX IS NOT CONVERGING! I get an error message

WARNING: Obtaining minimum variance quadratic unbiased estimates as starting values for the

         covariance parameters failed. I first tried d=b link=clogit. My prof suggested deleting the d=b. My outcome is ordinal (1-4)

*****************ANALYSES*******************************;

PROC glimmix DATA=one order=data;

  CLASS v6;

  MODEL encourage= /SOLUTION link=clogit;

  RANDOM intercept/SUBJECT=v6;

  NLOPTIONS TECHNIQUE=NRRIDG;

  weight v8;

  TITLE 'STEP 1: RANDOM EFFECTS ANOVA';

run;

[SteveDenham]

Well, the obvious first step would be to apply a multinomial distribution (dist=mult, or d=mult, with link=clogit).

This worked for me in translating the example in the PROC GENMOD documentation (Example 43.4 Ordinal Model for Multinomial Data) to a GLIMMIX framework.

Steve Denham