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wchang
Calcite | Level 5

 

Hello,

 

When estimating a multilevel model using proc mixed, is there a way to fix some of the covariances in the G matrix to 0 while freely estimating the other components? Here is the matrix I want to estimate:

 

var

cov   var

cov   cov   var

  0      0      0    var

  0      0      0     0   var

  0      0      0     0    0    var

3 REPLIES 3
SteveDenham
Jade | Level 19

Assuming that you have an unstructured matrix, and you can make reasonable assumptions regarding the variances and covariances to be estimated, then the PARMS statement should be what you need:

 

PARMS (var1) (cov12) (var2) (cov13) (cov23) (var3) (0) (0) (0) (var4) (0) (0) (0) (0) (var5) (0) (0) (0) (0) (0) (var6)/hold=7,8,9,11,12,13,14,16,17,18,19,20;

 

Insert appropriate values for var1-var6 and the covariances.  OR set the variances to 1 and covariances to 0, and let the optimizer work.

 

Steve Denham

wchang
Calcite | Level 5

Thank you so much for helping me understand the PARMS statement. What would be the criteria for determining appropriate starting values for the variances and covariances if I don't use 1s and 0s?

SteveDenham
Jade | Level 19

Variances and covariances are easy to come by using PROC CORR with the COV option. These would be reasonable starting values.

 

Steve Denham

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