A Reliability Coefficient for Maximum-Likelihood Parameter Estimates

There is increasing interest in the problem of whether participant-specific parameters estimated by fitting a model to behavioural data are reliable. Most studies approach this using test-retest correlations: asking participants to complete a task twice, and seeing how consistent their parameter estimates are.

However, there’s a pretty simple way of estimating reliability from a single session, which can be applied any model that is fit to individual participants’ data using maximum likelihood. I haven’t seen this described in detail anywhere else, so I walk through it in this post.

I suspect, but haven’t gotten around to showing, that the same principle can be applied to parameters estimated using Bayesian methods, or through multilevel modelling.

While this approach works for any situation in which parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood, I illustrate it first using a simple example - estimating the mean of a Normal distribution - so that it can be compared to the traditional Cronbach’s α estimate.

Data

First, let’s simulate data from 1000 participants. Each participant $p$ has a trait, $\mu_p$, and values $\mu_i$ are Normally distributed in the population, $\mu_p \sim \text{Normal}(0, 1)$. Each participant gives us $n$ trials, $x$, also Normally distributed, $x \sim \text{Normal}(\mu_i, 1)$.

A nice property of this example is that error variance is just $\sigma^2_e = \frac{1}{n}$, the standard error of measurement is the square root of this, $\sigma_e = \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}$, and the true reliability is $\frac{1}{1 + \sigma^2_e} = \frac{n}{n + 1}$.

library(tidyverse)
theme_set(theme_minimal(base_size = 16))
sem = function(x) sd(x) / sqrt(length(x))

lgnd = function(x, y){
theme(legend.position = c(x, y),  legend.justification = c(x, y))
}
set.seed(1234)

#' Simulate some data
generate_data = function(n_participants = 50,
n_trials = 10,
sd_participant = 1,
sd_trial = 1){
true_scores = rnorm(n_participants, 0, sd_participant)
data.frame(
participant = rep(1:n_participants, each = n_trials),
true_score  = rep(true_scores, each = n_trials),
trial_nr    = rep(1:n_trials, times = n_participants)) %>%
mutate(
x = rnorm(n(), true_score, sd_trial)
)
}

n_participants = 50
n_trials = 8
sd_participant = 1
sd_trial = 1
data = generate_data(n_participants, n_trials,
sd_participant, sd_trial)


The expected reliability for these simulation parameters is

$$\text{Reliability} = \frac{\sigma_p^2}{\sigma_p^2 + \sigma_e^2}$$

real_error_variance = sd_trial**2 / n_trials
real_true_score_variance = sd_participant^2
real_reliability = real_true_score_variance / (real_error_variance + real_true_score_variance)
real_reliability

## [1] 0.8888889


In the simple case where $\sigma_P = \sigma_{\epsilon} = 1$, this similifies to $\frac{N}{N+1}$.

if(sd_trial == 1 & sd_participant == 1){
n_trials / (n_trials + 1)
}

## [1] 0.8888889


Let’s start by aggregating our data…

means = data %>%
group_by(participant) %>%
summarise(true_score = mean(true_score),
estimate = mean(x),
n = n(),
sd(x),
sem = sd(x) / sqrt(n()))


…and visualing it

ggplot(data, aes(participant, x)) +
geom_point(alpha = .4) +
geom_point(data = means, mapping = aes(y = estimate), color = 'red', shape = 5) +
labs(x = 'Participant', y = 'Score',
caption = 'Red diamonds show mean scores')


df = means %>%
pivot_longer(c(true_score, estimate)) %>%
mutate(sem = ifelse(name == 'true_score', NA, sem),
what = ifelse(name == 'estimate', 'Estimate', 'True Score'))

ggplot(df, aes(participant, value, color = what,
ymin = value - sem, ymax = value + sem)) +
geom_point() +
geom_linerange(alpha = .3) +
scale_color_manual(values = c('black', 'red')) +
labs(x = 'Participant', y = 'Value',
color = 'What') +
lgnd(0, 1)

## Warning: Removed 50 rows containing missing values (geom_segment).


ggplot(means, aes(true_score, estimate,
ymin = estimate - sem,
ymax = estimate + sem)) +
geom_point() +
geom_linerange(alpha = .2) +
geom_abline(linetype = 'dashed', intercept = 0, slope = 1) +
coord_equal() +
labs(x = 'True score',
y = 'Estimated score (± SEM)')


Cronbach’s alpha

For this simple design, we can calculate α by treating each trial as if it were a separate item in a questionnaire.

# Reshape data to have one row per participant, one column per trial
wide_data = data %>%
select(participant, trial_nr, x) %>%
pivot_wider(names_from = trial_nr, values_from = x) %>%
select(-participant)

#' A simpler implmentation than that provided by psych::alpha()
cronbach_alpha = function(X){
p = ncol(X)
sum_then_var <- var(rowSums(X))
var_then_sum =  sum(apply(X, 2, var))
(p/(p - 1)) * (1 - (var_then_sum/sum_then_var))
}

reliability_cronbach = cronbach_alpha(wide_data)
reliability_cronbach

## [1] 0.8721193


Calculating Reliability from Standard Error

More generally, we can estimate reliability using standard errors. This works because the standard error for each participant is the square root of error variance for that participant, and so the average squared standard error can be used as an estimate of $\sigma_e$. Note also that the variance of our observed estimates, $\sigma_o$, reflects both variance in true scores and error variance: $\sigma_o = \sigma_p + \sigma_e$. This approach is implemented in the function below.

reliability_from_se = function(estimates, standard_errors){
total_var = var(estimates)
error_var = mean(standard_errors^2)
true_var = total_var - error_var
reliability = true_var / total_var
return(reliability)
}


Using Standard Error of the Mean

Since we’re just using mean values as estimates here, we can use the standard error of the mean here.

# Reminder of how we calculated SEM
means = data %>%
group_by(participant) %>%
summarise(estimate = mean(x),
n = n(),
sd = sd(x),
sem = sd / sqrt(n))

reliability_from_se(means$estimate, means$sem)

## [1] 0.8715345


Confidence Intervals for Reliability Estimates

We can easily obtain confidence intervals for these reliability estimates by bootstrapping.

calculate_reliability = function(estimates, standard_errors,
boostrap = TRUE, n_bootstraps = 500){
r = reliability_from_se(estimates, standard_errors)
if(bootstrap){
.n = length(estimates)
.indices = 1:.n
func = function(i, estimate, ses){
bootstrap_indices = sample(.indices, .n, replace = T)
reliability_from_se(estimates[bootstrap_indices],
standard_errors[bootstrap_indices])
}
bootstrap_estimates = map_dbl(1:n_bootstraps, func)
ci = quantile(bootstrap_estimates, c(.025, .975))
output = data.frame(
reliability = r,
se = sd(bootstrap_estimates)) %>%
mutate(ci.95.low = ci[1],
ci.95.high = ci[2])
return(output)
} else {
return(r)
}
}

calculate_reliability(means$estimate, means$sem)


Using Maximum Likelihood

If we’re fitting a more complicated model for each participant using maximum-likelihood estimation, we can use Fisher information to estimate the standard error and error variance. This method is completely general, in that it can be applied to any model estimated by maximum likelihood.

Note that this gives a very slightly different result than the standard error of measurement approach. This is because of a subtle quirk in that the maximum likelihood estimate of $\sigma_p$ is not an unbiased estimator (explained here), but it’s not worth worrying about.

# This is my general-purpose wrapper around R's optimisation routines,
# for maximum-likelihood estimation
fit_model = function(.data,
loglik_func,
par_names,
starting_values = NULL,
bounds = NULL){
if(is.null(starting_values)){
starting_values = rep(1, length(par_names))
}
if(!is.null(bounds)){
# Bounded optimization with L-BFGS-B
k = length(par_names)
lower = rep(-Inf, k)
upper = rep(Inf, k)
for(p in names(bounds)){
ix = match(p, par_names)
lower[ix] = bounds[[p]][1]
upper[ix] = bounds[[p]][2]
}
# Wrap loglik_func to avoid NA (needed for L-BFGS-B)
.loglik_func = function(.data, pars){
ll = loglik_func(.data, pars)
ifelse(is.na(ll), -9e9, ll)
}
fit = optim(par = starting_values,
fn = .loglik_func,
control = list(fnscale = -1),
.data = .data, hessian = T,
lower = lower, upper = upper,
method = 'L-BFGS-B')
} else {
fit = optim(par = starting_values,
fn = loglik_func,
control = list(fnscale = -1),
.data = .data, hessian = T)
}
stopifnot(length(fit$par) == length(par_names)) # Calculate standard error by inverting the Hessian and taking square root fisher_information = solve(-fit$hessian)
se = sqrt(diag(fisher_information))
output = data.frame(
term = par_names,
estimate = fit$par, se = se ) return(output) }  #' Calculate likelihood of partcipant's data, given parameters mu and sigma loglik_normal = function(.data, pars){ mu = pars[1] sigma = pars[2] loglik = sum(dnorm(.data$x, mu, sigma, log = T))
loglik
}

parameter_estimates = data %>%
nest(dfs = -participant) %>%
mutate(fits = map(dfs, fit_model,
loglik_func = loglik_normal,
par_names = c('mu', 'sigma'))) %>%
unnest(fits) %>%
select(-dfs)

## Warning in dnorm(.data$x, mu, sigma, log = T): NaNs produced  head(parameter_estimates)  mu_estimates = filter(parameter_estimates, term == 'mu') calculate_reliability(mu_estimates$estimate, mu_estimates$se)  Bayesian Estimation Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work for parameters that are estimated using Bayesian methods. This is because the priors used for Bayesian estimation reduce both$\sigma_p$and$\sigma_e$, but not to the same degree. There might prove to be some way of adapting this approach to work with Bayesian estimation, but I don’t kn ow what it would be. Linear Mixed Models As a side note, it’s also possible to estimate reliability using linear mixed models (LMMs) where the parameter of interest varies between participants as a random effect. library(lme4) mixed_model = lmer(x ~ 1 + (1|participant), data = data) mixed_model_varcor = VarCorr(mixed_model) %>% data.frame() mm_true_score_variance = mixed_model_varcor$vcov[1] # For later
summary(mixed_model)

## Linear mixed model fit by REML ['lmerMod']
## Formula: x ~ 1 + (1 | participant)
##    Data: data
##
## REML criterion at convergence: 1253.4
##
## Scaled residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max
## -3.2335 -0.5847  0.0095  0.5699  2.8027
##
## Random effects:
##  Groups      Name        Variance Std.Dev.
##  participant (Intercept) 0.8794   0.9378
##  Residual                1.0370   1.0183
## Number of obs: 400, groups:  participant, 50
##
## Fixed effects:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value
## (Intercept)  -0.4032     0.1421  -2.838


In a LMM, true score variance $\sigma_p$ is estimated directly, and reported in the model summary (a value 0.8794 here). Error variance can be extracted from the model as follows…

rfx = ranef(mixed_model, condVar = T)
mm_error_variance = rfx$participant %>% attr('postVar') %>% c() %>% mean()  …or, more simply, using the arm package: mm_error_variance = mean(arm::se.ranef(mixed_model)$participant^2)


Reliability can then be calculated as before

mm_true_score_variance / (mm_true_score_variance + mm_error_variance)

## [1] 0.8861591


Real Data

To finish, here’s the same approach applied to some real data: the much-analysed Stroop task data from Hedge, Powell and Sumner (2017) (I’m using preprocesed data from https://github.com/Nathaniel-Haines/Reliability_2020).

all_data = readRDS('data/long_format_all.rds')
stroop = all_data$Study1-Stroop %>% mutate(condition = factor(Condition, levels=0:2, labels = c('Congruent', 'Neutral', 'Incongruent'))) %>% select(participant = subj_num, session = Time, block = Block, trial = Trial, condition, accuracy = Correct, rt = RT) stroop1 = filter(stroop, session == 1)  First, we need to define our model: a function that takes a participant’s data and a set of parameters as inputs, and returns the log-likelihood of that data for those parameters under the model in question. For illustration, I’m using a simple model where scores are Normally distributed in each condition, means differ between conditions, but standard deviations are the same (e.g. a simple t-test or linear model that we could have fit using the lm() function anyway). loglik_mean_shift = function(.data, pars){ mu_congruent = pars[1] sigma = pars[2] d_mu = pars[3] ll1 = dnorm(.data$Congruent, mu_congruent, sigma, log=T) %>% sum()
ll2 = dnorm(.data$Incongruent, mu_congruent + d_mu, sigma, log=T) %>% sum() ll1 + ll2 } prepare_data = function(.subject_data){ df = .subject_data %>% filter(accuracy == 1) split(df$rt, df$condition) } # Test model on single participant's data .subject_data = filter(stroop1, participant == 1) .data = prepare_data(.subject_data) fit_model(.data, loglik_mean_shift, c('mu_congruent', 'sigma', 'd_mu'))  Then, we can fit it to every participant using a little bit of purrr magic for the preprocessing). (Note that warnings are suppressed for the code block below) # Apply to all participants participant_model_fits = stroop %>% nest(dfs = -c(participant)) %>% mutate( model_datas = map(dfs, prepare_data), model_fits = map(model_datas, fit_model, loglik_func = loglik_mean_shift, par_names = c('mu_congruent', 'sigma', 'd_mu'))) participant_estimates = participant_model_fits %>% select(participant, model_fits) %>% unnest(model_fits) head(participant_estimates)  ...and extract out the difference in means, the effect we care about. participant_effects = participant_estimates %>% filter(term == 'd_mu') plot_ascending = function(df, value_col, std_err_col){ plot_df = df %>% arrange({{value_col}}) %>% mutate(.order = 1:n(), estimate = {{value_col}}, low = {{value_col}} - {{std_err_col}}, high = {{value_col}} + {{std_err_col}}) ggplot(plot_df, aes(.order, estimate, ymin = low, ymax = high)) + geom_point() + geom_linerange() + geom_hline(linetype = 'dashed', yintercept = 0) + labs(x = 'Participant') } participant_effects %>% plot_ascending(estimate, se) + labs(y = 'Difference in Means (±SE)')  We can then plug these estimates into our function. calculate_reliability(participant_effects$estimate, participant_effects$se)  We end up with a reliability estimate of$0.614$, very close to the estimate of$0.60$Hedge et al (2017) obtained by calculating intraclass correlations across two sessions of this task. While we’re here, let’s try a more complex model,the shifted lognormal, which has close links to the Wald diffusion model. This model is discussed in more detail by Haines et al (2021), who fit it as part of a multilevel Bayesian model. The simple form of this model has three parameters:$\mu$(mu), which we can think of as reflecting the average decision time (on the log scale),$\sigma$, (sigma), reflecting the variability in decision time, and$\delta$(delta), reflecting constant non-decision time that is added to the response time. We allow$\mu$and$\sigma$to differ between congruent and incongruent trials for each participant, and use the difference in$\mu$between conditions as our measure of (a lack of) inhibitory control. shiftlnorm_lpdf = function(x, delta, mu, sigma){ -log((x - delta)*sigma*sqrt(2*pi)) - (log(x - delta) - mu)^2 / (2*sigma^2) } loglik_shiftlnorm = function(.data, pars) { # We parameterise mu and sigma in terms of their average, # and the difference of each condition from the average, # to prevent parameters from trading off against each other as much as possible delta = pars[1] average_mu = pars[2] average_sigma = pars[3] effect_mu = pars[4] effect_sigma = pars[5] mu1 = average_mu - .5 * effect_mu mu2 = average_mu + .5 * effect_mu sigma1 = average_sigma - .5 * effect_sigma sigma2 = average_sigma + .5 * effect_sigma loglik1 = shiftlnorm_lpdf(.data$Congruent, delta, mu1, sigma1) %>% suppressWarnings() %>% sum()
loglik2 = shiftlnorm_lpdf(.data$Incongruent, delta, mu2, sigma2) %>% suppressWarnings() %>% sum() return(loglik1 + loglik2) } par_names = c('delta', 'average_mu', 'average_sigma', 'effect_mu', 'effect_sigma') starting_values = c(0, 0, 1, 0, 0) bounds = list(delta = c(0, Inf), average_sigma = c(0, Inf))  Test the model out with a single participant: fit_model(.data, loglik_shiftlnorm, par_names, starting_values, bounds = bounds)  Fit to everyone: participant_model_fits2 = stroop1 %>% nest(dfs = -participant) %>% mutate( model_datas = map(dfs, prepare_data), model_fits = map(model_datas, fit_model, loglik_func = loglik_shiftlnorm, par_names = par_names, starting_values = starting_values, bounds = bounds)) participant_estimates2 = participant_model_fits2 %>% select(participant, model_fits) %>% unnest(model_fits) head(participant_estimates2, 10)  Examine results: participant_estimates2 %>% mutate(term = factor(term, levels = par_names)) %>% # Change order ggplot(aes(term, estimate)) + geom_point(position = position_jitter(width = .2), alpha = .5) + geom_hline(yintercept = 0, linetype = 'dashed') + labs(x = 'Term', y = 'Estimate')  Check for parameter correlations… df = participant_estimates2 %>% select(participant, term, estimate) %>% pivot_wider(names_from = term, values_from = estimate) %>% select(-participant) cor(df) %>% round(2)  ## delta average_mu average_sigma effect_mu effect_sigma ## delta 1.00 -0.78 0.62 0.38 0.10 ## average_mu -0.78 1.00 -0.60 -0.21 -0.23 ## average_sigma 0.62 -0.60 1.00 0.16 -0.05 ## effect_mu 0.38 -0.21 0.16 1.00 0.18 ## effect_sigma 0.10 -0.23 -0.05 0.18 1.00  plot(df)  We take the difference in$\mu$parameters between conditions, labelled effect_mu, as our parameter of interest. b_mu = participant_estimates2 %>% filter(term == 'effect_mu') b_mu %>% plot_ascending(estimate, se) + labs(y = 'Change in μ')  calculate_reliability(b_mu$estimate, b_mu\$se)


Reliability seems to be lower for this more complicated model. This is perhaps not surprising, since models with more parameters (5 per participant here, versus 3 above) will in general have greater error variance. However, this might still be a price worth paying if the parameter from this model is more closely aligned with the psychological construct we’re trying to measure — that is, it is more valid.

Next Steps

There are plenty of things that could be done next with all of this, but I’m not promising to find time to do any of them soon.

There are plenty of other existing data sets where this approach could be applied: for starters, everything included on https://github.com/Nathaniel-Haines/Reliability_2020). I also hope people might start using something like this approach to estimate reliability for their own tasks.

Figure out the Bayesian Solution

I feel there should be some way of applying this idea to parameters estimated using Bayesian methods. Maybe someone better at maths than I am can figure that one out.

Disattenuate Correlations

An effective approach to exploring correlations between task-based model parameters and questionnaire scores is to fit Bayesian hierarchical joint models Haines et al (2021), which automatically take reliability of parameter estimates into account. Unfortunately, these models are difficult to implement, and have ridiculous computational (and environmental) costs.

In principle, the same result could be achieved by estimating model parameters by maximum likelihood, estimating the reliability of everything, calculating Pearson correlation coefficients, and then simply adjusting — “disattenuating” — these correlations to take reliability into account. The advantage of this approach should be clear to anyone who has ever left a Stan model running over the weekend only to come back and find a tiny error.

Parameter Recovery

I would like to see this approach verified, particularly for more complicated models, through simulation. This would involve simulating data for participants with known true parameter values, fitting models and estimating reliability as done above, and then verifying that the estimated reliability approximately matches the actual squared correlations between true parameter values and estimates. I’m not sure, but ideally this might be worth doing for every model this approach is applied to.