The main functionalities provided by afex are:
- Interfaces for estimating standard ANOVAs with any number or
combination of within-subjects or between-subjects variables (the
ANOVA functions are
aov_car(),aov_ez(), andaov_4()which all fit the same model but differ in the way to specify the ANOVA model). - Function
mixed()provides an interface for mixed models analysis (estimated vialme4lmerorglmer) that automatically obtains p-values for fixed effects model terms (i.e., main effects and interactions). afex_plot()visualizes results from factorial experiments combining estimated marginal means and uncertainties associated with the estimated means in the foreground with a depiction of the raw data in the background.- All
afexmodel objects (i.e., ANOVA and mixed models) can be passed toemmeansfor follow-up/post-hoc/planned contrast analysis.
For afex support visit:
afex.singmann.science
-
afexis available from CRAN so the current stable version can be installed directly via:install.packages("afex") -
To install the latest development version you will need the
devtoolspackage:devtools::install_github("singmann/afex@master")
To calculate an ANOVA, afex requires the data to be in the long format
(i.e., one row per data point/observation). An ANOVA can then be
calculated via one of three functions that only differ in how the model
components are specified, but not in the output. Note that in contrast
to base lm or aov, afex ANOVA functions always require the
specification of a subject identifier column (the id-column), because in
case there are multiple observations per participant and cell of the
design, these multiple observations are aggregated (i.e., averaged) per
default.
- In
aov_ezthe columns containing id variable, dependent variable, and factors need to be specified as character vectors. aov_carbehaves similar to standardaovand requires the ANOVA to be specified as a formula containing anErrorterm (at least to identify the id variable).aov_4allows the ANOVA to be specified via a formula similar tolme4::lmer(with one random effects term).
A further overview is provided by the vignette.
The following code provides a simple example for an ANOVA with both
between- and within-subject factors. For this we use the
lexical-decision and word naming latencies reported by Freeman,
Heathcote, Chalmers, and Hockley (2010), see also ?fhch2010. As is
commonly done, we use the natural logarithm of the response times,
log_rt, as dependent variable. As independent variable we will
consider the between-subjects factor task ("naming" or "lexdec")
as well as the within-subjects-factors stimulus ("word" or
"nonword") and length (with 3 levels, 3, 4, or 5 letters).
library("afex")
# examples data set with both within- and between-subjects factors (see ?fhch2010)
data("fhch2010", package = "afex")
fhch <- fhch2010[ fhch2010$correct,] # remove errors
str(fhch2010) # structure of the data
#> 'data.frame': 13222 obs. of 10 variables:
#> $ id : Factor w/ 45 levels "N1","N12","N13",..: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
#> $ task : Factor w/ 2 levels "naming","lexdec": 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
#> $ stimulus : Factor w/ 2 levels "word","nonword": 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 ...
#> $ density : Factor w/ 2 levels "low","high": 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 ...
#> $ frequency: Factor w/ 2 levels "low","high": 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 ...
#> $ length : Factor w/ 3 levels "4","5","6": 3 3 2 2 1 1 3 2 1 3 ...
#> $ item : Factor w/ 600 levels "abide","acts",..: 363 121 202 525 580 135 42 368 227 141 ...
#> $ rt : num 1.091 0.876 0.71 1.21 0.843 ...
#> $ log_rt : num 0.0871 -0.1324 -0.3425 0.1906 -0.1708 ...
#> $ correct : logi TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE ...# estimate mixed ANOVA on the full design:
aov_ez("id", "log_rt", fhch, between = "task", within = c("stimulus", "length"))
aov_car(log_rt ~ task * stimulus * length + Error(id/(stimulus * length)),
data = fhch)
## equivalent: aov_car(log_rt ~ task + Error(id/(stimulus * length)), data = fhch)
aov_4(log_rt ~ task * stimulus * length + (stimulus * length|id), data = fhch)
## equivalent: aov_4(log_rt ~ task + (stimulus * length|id), data = fhch)
# the three calls return the same ANOVA table:#> Warning: More than one observation per design cell, aggregating data using `fun_aggregate = mean`.
#> To turn off this warning, pass `fun_aggregate = mean` explicitly.
#> Contrasts set to contr.sum for the following variables: task
#> Anova Table (Type 3 tests)
#>
#> Response: log_rt
#> Effect df MSE F ges p.value
#> 1 task 1, 43 0.23 13.38 *** .221 <.001
#> 2 stimulus 1, 43 0.01 173.25 *** .173 <.001
#> 3 task:stimulus 1, 43 0.01 87.56 *** .096 <.001
#> 4 length 1.83, 78.64 0.00 18.55 *** .008 <.001
#> 5 task:length 1.83, 78.64 0.00 1.02 <.001 .358
#> 6 stimulus:length 1.70, 72.97 0.00 1.91 <.001 .162
#> 7 task:stimulus:length 1.70, 72.97 0.00 1.21 <.001 .298
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '+' 0.1 ' ' 1
#>
#> Sphericity correction method: GG
ANOVA models can be used for plotting via afex_plot:
a <- aov_ez("id", "log_rt", fhch, between = "task", within = c("stimulus", "length"))
#> Warning: More than one observation per design cell, aggregating data using `fun_aggregate = mean`.
#> To turn off this warning, pass `fun_aggregate = mean` explicitly.afex_plot(a, "task", "stimulus", "length")
#> Warning: Panel(s) show a mixed within-between-design.
#> Error bars do not allow comparisons across all means.
#> Suppress error bars with: error = "none"
afex_plot returns a ggplot2 plot object which allows simple
customization:
library("ggplot2")
afex_plot(a, "task", "stimulus", "length") +
theme_bw()
#> Warning: Panel(s) show a mixed within-between-design.
#> Error bars do not allow comparisons across all means.
#> Suppress error bars with: error = "none"
Follow-up tests with emmeans need to be specified in two steps.
- Decide which factors of model should be involved in tests. Use these
factors to set-up reference grid of marginal means using
emmeans(). - Specify set of tests on reference grid from step 1. Either custom
contrasts as a
listand usingcontrast()or a convenience function such aspairs().
library("emmeans")
## set up reference grid using only length
em1 <- emmeans(a, "length")
em1
#> length emmean SE df lower.CL upper.CL
#> X4 -0.1087 0.0299 43 -0.169 -0.04834
#> X5 -0.0929 0.0296 43 -0.153 -0.03310
#> X6 -0.0653 0.0290 43 -0.124 -0.00679
#>
#> Results are averaged over the levels of: task, stimulus
#> Confidence level used: 0.95
## test all pairwise comparisons on reference grid:
pairs(em1)
#> contrast estimate SE df t.ratio p.value
#> X4 - X5 -0.0159 0.00768 43 -2.065 0.1092
#> X4 - X6 -0.0434 0.00782 43 -5.555 <.0001
#> X5 - X6 -0.0276 0.00602 43 -4.583 0.0001
#>
#> Results are averaged over the levels of: task, stimulus
#> P value adjustment: tukey method for comparing a family of 3 estimates
## only test specified tests
con <- list(
"4vs5" = c(-1, 1, 0),
"5vs6" = c(0, -1, 1)
)
contrast(em1, con, adjust = "holm")
#> contrast estimate SE df t.ratio p.value
#> 4vs5 0.0159 0.00768 43 2.065 0.0449
#> 5vs6 0.0276 0.00602 43 4.583 0.0001
#>
#> Results are averaged over the levels of: task, stimulus
#> P value adjustment: holm method for 2 testsFunction mixed() fits a mixed model with lme4::lmer (or
lme4::glmer if a family argument is passed) and then calculates
p-values for fixed effects model terms using a variety of methods. The
formula to mixed needs to be the same as in a call to lme4::lmer.
The default method for calculation of p-values is 'S'
(Satterthwaite) which only works for linear mixed models (i.e., no
family argument). A similar method that provides a somewhat better
control of Type I errors for small data sets is 'KR' (Kenward-Roger),
but it can require considerable RAM and time. Other methods are ,
similar to 'KR' but requires less RAM), 'PB' (parametric bootstrap),
and 'LRT' (likelihood-ratio test).
More examples are provided in the
vignette,
here we use the same example data as above, the lexical decision and
word naming latencies collected by Freeman et al. (2010). To avoid long
computation times we only consider the two factors task and length
(omitting stimulus is probably not a fully sensible model). Because
mixed models easily allow it, we will consider crossed-random effects
for participants (id) and items (tem).
library("afex")
# examples data set with both within- and between-subjects factors (see ?fhch2010)
data("fhch2010", package = "afex")
fhch <- fhch2010[ fhch2010$correct,] # remove errors
str(fhch2010) # structure of the data
#> 'data.frame': 13222 obs. of 10 variables:
#> $ id : Factor w/ 45 levels "N1","N12","N13",..: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
#> $ task : Factor w/ 2 levels "naming","lexdec": 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
#> $ stimulus : Factor w/ 2 levels "word","nonword": 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 ...
#> $ density : Factor w/ 2 levels "low","high": 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 ...
#> $ frequency: Factor w/ 2 levels "low","high": 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 ...
#> $ length : Factor w/ 3 levels "4","5","6": 3 3 2 2 1 1 3 2 1 3 ...
#> $ item : Factor w/ 600 levels "abide","acts",..: 363 121 202 525 580 135 42 368 227 141 ...
#> $ rt : num 1.091 0.876 0.71 1.21 0.843 ...
#> $ log_rt : num 0.0871 -0.1324 -0.3425 0.1906 -0.1708 ...
#> $ correct : logi TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE ...For the random-effects grouping factors we begin with the maximal random
effect structure justified by the design (see Barr, Levy, Scheepers, &
Tily, 2013). In this case this is by-subject random intercepts and
by-subjects random slopes for stimulus and by-item random intercepts
and by-item random slopes for task.
m1 <- mixed(log_rt ~ task * length + (length | id) + (task | item),
fhch)
#> Contrasts set to contr.sum for the following variables: task, length, id, item
#> boundary (singular) fit: see help('isSingular')Fitting this model produces a critical convergence warning, that the fit is singular. This warning usually indicates that the data does not provide enough information for the request random effect parameters. In a real analysis it would therefore be a good idea to iteratively reduce the random effect structure until the warning disappears. A good first step would be to remove the correlations among random effect terms as shown below.
This warning is also shown if we simply print the model object, but not
if we call the nice() method.
m1
#> Warning: lme4 reported (at least) the following warnings for 'full':
#> * boundary (singular) fit: see help('isSingular')
#> Mixed Model Anova Table (Type 3 tests, S-method)
#>
#> Model: log_rt ~ task * length + (length | id) + (task | item)
#> Data: fhch
#> Effect df F p.value
#> 1 task 1, 44.80 13.47 *** <.001
#> 2 length 2, 325.78 6.03 ** .003
#> 3 task:length 2, 303.23 0.33 .722
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '+' 0.1 ' ' 1
nice(m1)
#> Mixed Model Anova Table (Type 3 tests, S-method)
#>
#> Model: log_rt ~ task * length + (length | id) + (task | item)
#> Data: fhch
#> Effect df F p.value
#> 1 task 1, 44.80 13.47 *** <.001
#> 2 length 2, 325.78 6.03 ** .003
#> 3 task:length 2, 303.23 0.33 .722
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '+' 0.1 ' ' 1If we call the anova() method a slightly different output is shown in
which the p-values are not rounded in the same way and the warning is
shown again.
anova(m1)
#> Warning: lme4 reported (at least) the following warnings for 'full':
#> * boundary (singular) fit: see help('isSingular')
#> Mixed Model Anova Table (Type 3 tests, S-method)
#>
#> Model: log_rt ~ task * length + (length | id) + (task | item)
#> Data: fhch
#> num Df den Df F Pr(>F)
#> task 1 44.797 13.4692 0.0006426 ***
#> length 2 325.775 6.0255 0.0026940 **
#> task:length 2 303.227 0.3263 0.7218472
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1We can also get the default lme4 output if we call the summary
method. However, note that in contrast to the previous methods, results
are shown for factor-levels and not model-terms which is usually not
interpretable for factors with more than two levels. This is the case
for length here. The problem is that factors with
summary(m1)
#> Linear mixed model fit by REML. t-tests use Satterthwaite's method [
#> lmerModLmerTest]
#> Formula: log_rt ~ task * length + (length | id) + (task | item)
#> Data: data
#>
#> REML criterion at convergence: 7624.2
#>
#> Scaled residuals:
#> Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
#> -5.9267 -0.5900 -0.1018 0.4789 5.2673
#>
#> Random effects:
#> Groups Name Variance Std.Dev. Corr
#> item (Intercept) 0.0115702 0.10756
#> task1 0.0104587 0.10227 0.47
#> id (Intercept) 0.0374050 0.19340
#> length1 0.0003297 0.01816 0.16
#> length2 0.0001009 0.01005 0.11 -0.96
#> Residual 0.0925502 0.30422
#> Number of obs: 12960, groups: item, 600; id, 45
#>
#> Fixed effects:
#> Estimate Std. Error df t value Pr(>|t|)
#> (Intercept) -0.089098 0.029468 44.989068 -3.024 0.004117 **
#> task1 -0.108035 0.029437 44.797243 -3.670 0.000643 ***
#> length1 -0.020756 0.007810 226.902599 -2.658 0.008425 **
#> length2 -0.003746 0.007467 380.122063 -0.502 0.616214
#> task1:length1 0.005719 0.007569 206.633789 0.756 0.450736
#> task1:length2 -0.004627 0.007214 353.115359 -0.641 0.521661
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#>
#> Correlation of Fixed Effects:
#> (Intr) task1 lngth1 lngth2 tsk1:1
#> task1 0.118
#> length1 0.056 0.007
#> length2 0.021 0.002 -0.526
#> tsk1:lngth1 0.007 0.058 0.329 -0.173
#> tsk1:lngth2 0.003 0.022 -0.174 0.349 -0.528
#> optimizer (nloptwrap) convergence code: 0 (OK)
#> boundary (singular) fit: see help('isSingular')Because of the singular fit warning, we reduce the random effect
structure. Usually a good starting point is removing the correlations
among the random effects parameters. This can be done in afex::mixed
even for factors by combining the double bar notation || with
expand_re = TRUE. We do so for both random effects terms.
m2 <- mixed(log_rt ~ task * length + (length || id) + (task || item),
fhch, expand_re = TRUE)
#> Contrasts set to contr.sum for the following variables: task, length, id, item
#> boundary (singular) fit: see help('isSingular')However, the singular fit warning remains. We therefore inspect the random effect estimates to see which random effect parameter is estimated to be near to zero.
summary(m2)$varcor
#> Groups Name Std.Dev.
#> item re2.task1 1.0119e-01
#> item.1 (Intercept) 1.0685e-01
#> id re1.length2 3.1129e-06
#> id.1 re1.length1 1.2292e-02
#> id.2 (Intercept) 1.9340e-01
#> Residual 3.0437e-01As shown above, one parameter of the by-participant random slope for
length is estimated to be almost zero, re1.length2. We therefore
remove the by-participant random slope for length in the next model
which does not show any convergence warnings.
m3 <- mixed(log_rt ~ task * length + (1 | id) + (task || item),
fhch, expand_re = TRUE)
#> Contrasts set to contr.sum for the following variables: task, length, id, item
m3
#> Mixed Model Anova Table (Type 3 tests, S-method)
#>
#> Model: log_rt ~ task * length + (1 | id) + (task || item)
#> Data: fhch
#> Effect df F p.value
#> 1 task 1, 44.74 13.52 *** <.001
#> 2 length 2, 597.20 6.67 ** .001
#> 3 task:length 2, 592.82 0.40 .668
#> ---
#> Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '+' 0.1 ' ' 1Objects returned by mixed can be used for plotting with afex_plot.
However, two things need to be considered.
- The
idargument ofafex_plotallows specifying over which random effects grouping factors the data plotted in the background should be averaged over. Per default this uses all random effects grouping factors. In the present case this would mean that all data points are shown resulting in a very busy plot. When choosing only one of the random effects grouping factor, data points in the background show average response for each level of that factor. For example, when settingid = "id"here each data point in the background shows the meanlog_rtof one participant (i.e., level ofid). - Estimated marginal means in the foreground are estimated via
emmeanswhich per default attempts to estimate the degrees of freedom using the expensive Kenward-Roger method unless the number of data points is high (as here). This can produce quite some status messages (not shown here). Useemmeans::emm_options(lmer.df = "asymptotic")to suppress this calculation.
library("ggplot2")
## all data points shown
afex_plot(m3, "task", "length") +
theme_bw()
## data points show IDs
afex_plot(m3, "task", "length", id = "id") +
theme_bw()
## data points show items
afex_plot(m3, "task", "length", id = "item") +
theme_bw()
Follow-up tests with emmeans need to be specified in two steps.
- Decide which factors of model should be involved in tests. Use these
factors to set-up reference grid of marginal means using
emmeans(). - Specify set of tests on reference grid from step 1. Either custom
contrasts as a
listand usingcontrast()or a convenience function such aspairs().
For mixed models, emmeans attempts to estimate the degrees of freedom.
The method can be set via emm_options(lmer.df = ...). Here we use
"asymptotic" which does not estimate the degrees of freedom, but sets
them to infinity.
library("emmeans")
emm_options(lmer.df = "asymptotic")
## set up reference grid using only length
em2 <- emmeans(m3, "length")
#> NOTE: Results may be misleading due to involvement in interactions
em2
#> length emmean SE df asymp.LCL asymp.UCL
#> 4 -0.1099 0.0304 Inf -0.169 -0.05040
#> 5 -0.0924 0.0304 Inf -0.152 -0.03296
#> 6 -0.0642 0.0304 Inf -0.124 -0.00469
#>
#> Results are averaged over the levels of: task
#> Degrees-of-freedom method: asymptotic
#> Confidence level used: 0.95
## test all pairwise comparisons on reference grid:
pairs(em2)
#> contrast estimate SE df z.ratio p.value
#> length4 - length5 -0.0175 0.0126 Inf -1.384 0.3495
#> length4 - length6 -0.0457 0.0126 Inf -3.618 0.0009
#> length5 - length6 -0.0282 0.0126 Inf -2.238 0.0649
#>
#> Results are averaged over the levels of: task
#> Degrees-of-freedom method: asymptotic
#> P value adjustment: tukey method for comparing a family of 3 estimates
## only test specified tests
con <- list(
"4vs5" = c(-1, 1, 0),
"5vs6" = c(0, -1, 1)
)
contrast(em2, con, adjust = "holm")
#> contrast estimate SE df z.ratio p.value
#> 4vs5 0.0175 0.0126 Inf 1.384 0.1665
#> 5vs6 0.0282 0.0126 Inf 2.238 0.0504
#>
#> Results are averaged over the levels of: task
#> Degrees-of-freedom method: asymptotic
#> P value adjustment: holm method for 2 testsBarr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255-278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001
Freeman, E., Heathcote, A., Chalmers, K., & Hockley, W. (2010). Item effects in recognition memory for words. Journal of Memory and Language, 62(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2009.09.004
Please note that afex is released with a Contributor Code of
Conduct.
By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.
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