Very small estimate with a very large standard error in univariate modelling.
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Zhiyang
Joined: 12/11/2024
Forums
Dear all,
This is the first time to have a post in this forum, and thanks for the platform.
I am a researcher working on the Finnish Twin Cohorts, and I am doing a univariate twin modeling on depression. I have 113 DZ pairs and 69 MZ pairs. The outcome of depression is basically normal-distributed.
Then in the ADE model, I get the data summary and results like this:
data:
$MZ
dep1 dep2 age1 age2
Min. :1.375 Min. :1.375 Min. :34.43 Min. :34.62
1st Qu.:1.750 1st Qu.:1.750 1st Qu.:36.02 1st Qu.:35.92
Median :1.875 Median :1.875 Median :37.14 Median :37.25
Mean :1.893 Mean :1.891 Mean :37.30 Mean :37.31
3rd Qu.:2.000 3rd Qu.:2.000 3rd Qu.:38.57 3rd Qu.:38.69
Max. :3.250 Max. :2.750 Max. :39.61 Max. :39.74
$DZ
dep1 dep2 age1 age2
Min. :1.250 Min. :1.250 Min. :34.55 Min. :34.49
1st Qu.:1.625 1st Qu.:1.750 1st Qu.:35.90 1st Qu.:35.92
Median :1.875 Median :1.875 Median :37.16 Median :37.12
Mean :1.889 Mean :1.869 Mean :37.19 Mean :37.18
3rd Qu.:2.000 3rd Qu.:2.000 3rd Qu.:38.54 3rd Qu.:38.47
Max. :3.000 Max. :2.750 Max. :39.75 Max. :39.82
free parameters:
name matrix row col Estimate Std.Error A lbound ubound
1 mean MZ.meanG 1 1 1.88344659 115.8524
2 beta1 MZ.b 1 1 0.01000000 NA !
3 VA11 MZ.VA 1 1 0.00194220 303.5822 ! 1e-04!
4 VD11 MZ.VD 1 1 0.03293261 293.7319 ! 1e-04!
5 VE11 MZ.VE 1 1 0.05600604 328.6864 1e-04
The estimates of variance of A, D, or E are quite small, but their SE is large. I am wondering why this thing happened? Is it because of small sample size?
Besides, there is another warning:
The Hessian at the solution does not appear to be convex. See ?mxCheckIdentification for possible diagnosis (Mx status RED).
Thank you very much for your insightful suggestions!
Best
Zhiyang