I trying to run a simple two-level MLM with a group-mean centered (cwc - centered within cluster) level-1 variable. As my clusters have relatively small size, the observed mean would not be reliable. It would be better to estimate the unobserved true group means and work with those. I’m wondering i…

[image] Tay: It would be better to estimate the unobserved true group means and work with those. If I’m reading this correctly I think you can just estimate these things directly instead of doing a two-stage inference. Check out the non-linear models here: Estimating Non-Linear Models with b…

Thanks a lot! It might take me some time to figure how to use it in my case, but that does appear to be the right way to go. I’ll post what I did if I succeed so that others can see it. With all the recent emphasis on latent mean centering, I think many people might be interested in how to do this i…

[image] Tay: I’ll post what I did if I succeed so that others can see it Cool thanks! It is super useful to have answers make their way back!

Hi Matti, Unfortunately, no. I tried for a while but decided to just use a convenience software instead (not Bayesian tho). I used MPlus, which is a paid software and of which authors were one of the first to come up with this method. Sorry this was not a satisfactory answer - I also tried to do it…

Hi Tay, thanks for the reply! Yeah that makes sense. I’ve been copying this approach: Bayesian MLM With Group Mean Centering | Mark Lai and almost have it working (I think :)) for my application. Once I have that going I’m going to try to see if I can hack it in brms. Cheers.

Treat the cluster mean of a predictor variable as a latent variable - hierarchical linear models

Interfaces brms

matti November 8, 2022, 5:05pm 5

Hi @Tay, just wondering if you were able to make this work?

Latent mean centering (latent covariate models) in brms

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Treat the cluster mean of a predictor variable as a latent variable - hierarchical linear models

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