Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 2, 2025

Development of an Individual-Tree Basal Area Increment Model using a Linear Mixed-Effects Approach
Published on: July 3, 2020
Level-specific residuals and diagnostic measures, plots, and tests for random effects selection in multilevel and
Sun-Joo Cho1, Paul De Boeck2,3, Matthew Naveiras4
1Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA. sj.cho@vanderbilt.edu.
Abstract:
Multilevel data structures are often found in multiple substantive research areas, and multilevel models (MLMs) have been widely used to allow for such multilevel data structures. One important step when applying MLM is the selection of an optimal set of random effects to account for variability and heteroscedasticity in multilevel data. Literature reviews on current practices in applying MLM showed that diagnostic plots are only rarely used for model selection and for model checking. In this study, possible random effects and a generic description of the random effects were provided to guide researchers to select necessary random effects. In addition, based on extensive literature reviews, level-specific diagnostic plots were presented using various kinds of level-specific residuals, and diagnostic measures and statistical tests were suggested to select a set of random effects. Existing and newly proposed methods were illustrated using two data sets: a cross-sectional data set and a longitudinal data set. Along with the illustration, we discuss the methods and provide guidelines to select necessary random effects in model-building steps. R code was provided for the analyses.
More Related Videos
06:48Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
06:52Using Cholesky Decomposition to Explore Individual Differences in Longitudinal Relations between Reading Skills
Published on: September 17, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Residual Plots
When the residual values are plotted against the variable x, it is called a residual...
Residuals and Least-Squares Property
If the observed data point lies above the line, the residual is positive, and the line underestimates the actual data value for y. If the observed data point lies below the line, the residual is negative, and the line overestimates the actual data value for y.
The process of fitting the best-fit...
Mechanistic Models: Compartment Models in Individual and Population Analysis
Mechanistic Models: Compartment Models in Algorithms for Numerical Problem Solving
In individual population analyses, different algorithms are employed, such as Cauchy's method, which uses a...
Comparing the Survival Analysis of Two or More Groups
Randomized Experiments
Simple randomization
Simple...