Solved – GLM for proportional data and underdispersion

generalized linear modelunderdispersion

I'd like asking your help to understand a statistical issue from my data set. I ran a GLM with proportional data, using a binomial distribution. However, I've found underdispersion in my model and I don't know how to deal with that. I'm aware that a solution for overdispersion is fit a model using a quasibinomial distribution, but I couldn't find a solution to my problem in the literature.

I'm comparing the differences between continuous forest sites and fragments regarding the proportion of richness and abundance of specialist species. So, the models are:

M1 <- glm(prop_rich_speci ~ LandscapeBin, 
          family = binomial, 
          weights=rich_total_sp, 
          data = envir.all)
M2 <- glm(prop_abu_speci ~ LandscapeBin,  
          family = binomial, 
          weights=abu_total_sp, 
          data = envir.all)

I think using a quasibinomial distribution I can solve my problem (underdispersion), as Ben suggested.

Best Answer

My answer from http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/316863 :

short answer: quasi-likelihood estimation (i.e. family= quasibinomial) should address underdispersion as well as overdispersion reasonably well

If you just want to assume that $\textrm{variance} = \phi \cdot N p(1-p)$ with $\phi < 1$, quasi-likelihood estimation will work fine. Depending on the source of your underdispersion, how much you're concerned about modeling the details, other aspects of your data, you might want to look into ordinal or COM-Poisson models (both of these approaches have R packages devoted to them).

There is generally less concern about underdispersion than overdispersion; I speculate that two of the reasons are

  • overdispersion is probably the more common problem
  • underdispersion leads to conservatism in statistical inference (e.g. decreased power, lowered type I errors), in contrast to overdispersion which leads to optimism (inflated type I error rate etc.), so reviewers etc. tend not to worry about it as much
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