Ordered Logistic Regression Model Issues

When estimating this ordered logistic regression model, I get the following error message:

[1] "Error in sampler$call_sampler(args_list[[i]]) : Initialization failed."
error occurred during calling the sampler; sampling not done

Here is my stan model:

data {
  int N; //number of observations
  //Outcome
  int<lower=0> L; //number of ordinal categories
  int<lower=0, upper=L> act[N]; 
  //Clusterin factor
  int K; //number of respondents
  int respondent[N]; //respondent ID
  //measurement level predictors
  real prevalence[N]; 
}
parameters {
  real beta[K]; //respondent slopes for prevalence
  ordered[L-1] C; //cut points for ordered outcome
  real beta_top; //fixed effect intercept
  real<lower=0> sigma_top; 
}
model {
  for(i in 1:N) {
    int a_respondent;
    a_respondent = respondent[i];
    act[i] ~ ordered_logistic(prevalence[i] * beta[a_respondent], C);
  }
  //priors
  beta ~ normal(beta_top, sigma_top); 
  //hyperpriors
  beta_top ~ normal(0,2);
  sigma_top ~ cauchy(0,2);
}

act is of type integer, on a 0-7 scale.
L is equal to seven.
prevalence is of type real.
respondent is the clustering factor for the hierarchical model.

This is my R script:

#Import Stan Model
#Model 1 - Ordered Logistic Distribution
logistic_hierarchical <- stan_model("Ordinal_Logistic_Model_Hierarchical.stan")

#Data
act <- df$act
act<- as.integer(act)
prevalence <- df$prev_swc
respondent <- df$respondent_id
respondent <- as.factor(df$respondent_id)

data_logistic <- list(L = nlevels(as.factor(act)), act = as.integer(act), 
                      prevalence = prevalence, N=length((act)), K = nlevels(respondent), respondent = as.integer(respondent))

#Execute
options(mc.cores = parallel::detectCores(4))
hierarchical_logistic_model <- sampling(logistic_hierarchical, data = data_logistic, chains = 4,
                                iter =2000 refresh = 0)

Is anyone able to help?

It might be because ordered_logistic() expects that levels start at 1. This is the error I get when running your model with cases where act = 0:

Chain 1 Exception: ordered_logistic: Random variable is 0, but must be in the interval [1, 8] (in 'C:/Users/Simon/AppData/Local/Temp/Rtmp2RHbJf/model-22ac4c511853.stan', line 22, column 4 to column 69)

Note that your data constraint int<lower=0, upper=L> act[N]; allows values outside your expected range, since L = 8 in your case. It won’t cause a problem in your case, but worth noting in case your code changes.

See the documentation for more details.

That worked! Thank you! I’ve spent days trying to figure out what the issue is, so i really appreciate this!

Marked as solution!