R help - Sep 2003 - Help with glmmML package

Dear R users,

I have been using the package glmmML to fit a logistic-normal mixed model
to clustered binary data. Along with parameter estimates I would also like
to obtain estimates of the random effects. I have noticed that a fitted
"glmmML" object contains a component called "frail", a
vector, which looks
to be an estimate of the random effects. Can anyone confirm this? And if
so, how are these estimates obtained from the fitted model? Are they the
empirical Bayes estimates? Any reference would also be great.

Thanks very much for your help.

Farouk

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Farouk Nathoo wrote:
> Dear R users,
>
> I have been using the package glmmML to fit a logistic-normal mixed model
> to clustered binary data. Along with parameter estimates I would also like
> to obtain estimates of the random effects. I have noticed that a fitted
> "glmmML" object contains a component called "frail", a
vector, which looks
> to be an estimate of the random effects. Can anyone confirm this?
I can.
> And if
> so, how are these estimates obtained from the fitted model?
They are the conditional expectations of the random effects, given
"data",
calculated at the parameter values given by the fitted model.
> Are they the empirical Bayes estimates?
I guess one could call them that.

I apologize for the bad documentation of glmmML. Hopefully I will be able
to deliver improvements during this fall. Until then, read the source
code. :-)

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 G?ran Brostr?m                    tel: +46 90 786 5223
 Department of Statistics          fax: +46 90 786 6614
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