main_functions: Fitting Weighted Quantile Sum regression models

gwqsR Documentation

Fitting Weighted Quantile Sum regression models

Description

Fits Weighted Quantile Sum (WQS) regression (Carrico et al. (2014) \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1007/s13253-014-0180-3")}), a random subset implementation of WQS (Curtin et al. (2019) \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1080/03610918.2019.1577971")}), a repeated holdout validation WQS (Tanner et al. (2019) \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1016/j.mex.2019.11.008")}) and a WQS with 2 indices (Renzetti et al. (2023) \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.3389/fpubh.2023.1289579")}) for continuous, binomial, multinomial, Poisson, quasi-Poisson and negative binomial outcomes.

Usage

gwqs(formula, data, na.action, weights, mix_name, stratified, rh = 1, b = 100,
             b1_pos = TRUE, bint_cont_pos = NULL, bint_cat_pos = NULL, b_constr = FALSE,
             zero_infl = FALSE, q = 4, validation = 0.6, validation_rows = NULL,
             family = gaussian, signal = c("t2", "t3", "one", "abst", "expt"),
             rs = FALSE, n_vars = NULL,
             zilink = c("logit", "probit", "cloglog", "cauchit", "log"), seed = NULL,
             wp = NULL, wn = NULL, plan_strategy = "sequential", lambda = 0,
             optim.method = c("BFGS", "Nelder-Mead", "CG", "SANN"),
             control = list(trace = FALSE, maxit = 2000, reltol = 1e-9),
             b1_constr = NULL, ...)

gwqs_multinom(formula, data, na.action, weights, mix_name, stratified, rh = 1, b = 100,
                      b1_pos = c(TRUE, TRUE), b_constr = FALSE, q = 4,
                      validation = 0.6, validation_rows = NULL,
                      signal = c("t2", "t3", "one", "abst", "expt"),
                      rs = FALSE, n_vars = NULL,
                      zilink = c("logit", "probit", "cloglog", "cauchit", "log"),
                      seed = NULL, wp = NULL, wn = NULL, plan_strategy = "sequential",
                      lambda = 0, optim.method = c("BFGS", "Nelder-Mead", "CG", "SANN"),
                      control = list(trace = FALSE, maxit = 2000, reltol = 1e-9),
                      b1_constr = NULL, ...)

gwqsrh(formula, data, na.action, weights, mix_name, stratified, rh = 1, b = 100,
               b1_pos = TRUE, bint_cont_pos = NULL, bint_cat_pos = NULL, b_constr = FALSE,
               zero_infl = FALSE, q = 4, validation = 0.6, validation_rows = NULL,
               family = gaussian, signal = c("t2", "t3", "one", "abst", "expt"),
               rs = FALSE, n_vars = NULL,
               zilink = c("logit", "probit", "cloglog", "cauchit", "log"), seed = NULL,
               wp = NULL, wn = NULL, plan_strategy = "sequential", lambda = 0,
               optim.method = c("BFGS", "Nelder-Mead", "CG", "SANN"),
               control = list(trace = FALSE, maxit = 2000, reltol = 1e-9), ...)

Arguments

formula

An object of class formula specifying the relationship to be tested. The wqs term must be included in formula, e.g. y ~ wqs + .... To test for an interaction term with a continuous variable a or for a quadratic term we can specify the formula as below: y ~ wqs*a + ... and y ~ wqs + I(wqs^2) + ..., respectively.

data

The data.frame containing the variables to be included in the model.

na.action

model.frame. na.omit is the default.

weights

An optional term containing the name of the variable in the dataset representing the weights to be used in the fitting process. Should be NULL or the variable name.

mix_name

A character vector listing the variables contributing to a mixture effect.

stratified

The character name of the variable for which you want to stratify for. It has to be a factor.

rh

Number of repeated holdout validations.

b

Number of bootstrap samples used in parameter estimation. No bootstrap will be performed if b = 1.

b1_pos

A logical value that determines whether weights are derived from models where the beta values were positive (TRUE) or negative (FALSE).

bint_cont_pos

A logical value that determines whether weights are derived from models where the beta parameter of the interaction term between the WQS index and a continuous variable were positive (TRUE) or negative (FALSE).

bint_cat_pos

A logical value or a vector of logical values that determines whether weights are derived from models where the slopes of the WQS index for each level (other than the reference one) of the interacting categorical variable were positive (TRUE) or negative (FALSE).

b_constr

A logial value that determines whether to apply positive (if b1_pos = TRUE) or negative (if b1_pos = FALSE) constraints in the optimization function for the weight estimation.

zero_infl

A logical value (TRUE or FALSE) that allows to fit a zero inflated model in case family = "poisson" or family = "negbin".

q

An integer to specify how mixture variables will be ranked, e.g. in quartiles (q = 4), deciles (q = 10), or percentiles (q = 100). If q = NULL then the values of the mixture variables are taken (these must be standardized).

validation

Percentage of the dataset to be used to validate the model. If validation = 0 then the test dataset is used as validation dataset too.

validation_rows

A list of a single (if rh=1) or multiple vectors containing the rows to be considered in the validation step. When "validation_rows=NULL" (default) the function randomly choose the observations to be considered in the validation step.

family

A character value that allows to decide for the glm: gaussian for linear regression, binomial for logistic regression, poisson for Poisson regression, quasipoisson for quasi-Poisson regression, "negbin" for negative binomial regression.

signal

Character identifying the signal function to be used when the average weights are estimated. It can take values from "one" to apply the identity, "abst" to apply the absolute value of the t-statistic, "t2" to apply the squared value of the t-statistic, "expt" to apply the exponential of the t-statistic as signal function.

rs

A logic value. If rs = FALSE then the bootstrap implementation of WQS is performed. If rs = TRUE then the random subset implementation of WQS is applied (see the "Details" and the vignette for further information).

n_vars

The number of mixture components to be included at each random subset step. If rs = TRUE and n_vars = NULL then the square root of the number of elements in the mixture is taken.

zilink

Character specification of link function in the binary zero-inflation model (you can choose among "logit", "probit", "cloglog", "cauchit", "log").

seed

An integer value to fix the seed, if it is equal to NULL no seed is chosen.

wp, wn

An optional set of starting weights for the positive (wp) and negative (wn) directions to be passed to the optimization function. The default is wp = NULL, wn = NULL to let the gwqs function set the starting values.

plan_strategy

A character value that allows to choose the evaluation strategies for the plan function. You can choose among "sequential", "transparent", "multisession", "multicore", "multiprocess", "cluster" and "remote" (see plan help page for more details).

lambda

The value of the penalization term used to shrink towards 0 the weights that are not truly associated with the outcome (see the "Details" and the vignette for further information).

optim.method

A character identifying the method to be used by the optim function (you can choose among "BFGS", "Nelder-Mead", "CG", "SANN", "BFGS" is the default). See optim for details.

control

The control list of optimization parameters. See optim for details.

b1_constr

The argument is deprecated, use 'b_constr' instead.

...

Additional arguments to be passed to the function

Details

gWQS uses the glm function in the stats package to fit the linear, logistic, the Poisson and the quasi-Poisson regression, while the glm.nb function from the MASS package is used to fit the negative binomial regression respectively. The nlm function from the stats package was used to optimize the log-likelihood of the multinomial regression.

The optim optimization function is used to estimate the weights at each bootstrap step.

The seed argument specifies a fixed seed through the set.seed function.

The rs term allows to choose the type of methodology between the bootstrap implementation (WQSBS) or the random subset implementation (WQSRS) of the WQS. The first method performs b bootstrapped samples to estimate the weights while the second creates b randomly-selected subset of the total predictor set. For further details please see the vignette ("How to use gWQS package") and the references below.

Value

gwqs return the results of the WQS regression as well as many other objects and datasets.

fit

The object that summarizes the output of the WQS model, reflecting a linear, logistic, multinomial, Poisson, quasi-Poisson or negative binomial regression depending on how the family parameter was specified. The summary function can be used to call and print fit data (not for multinomial regression).

final_weights

data.frame containing the final weights associated to each chemical.

conv

Indicates whether the solver has converged (0) or not (1 or 2).

bres

Matrix of estimated weights, mixture effect parameter estimates and the associated standard errors, statistics and p-values estimated for each bootstrap iteration.

wqs

Vector containing the wqs index for each subject.

pwqs

Vector containing the positive wqs index for each subject.

nwqs

Vector containing the negative wqs index for each subject.

qi

List of the cutoffs used to divide in quantiles the variables in the mixture

bindex

List of vectors containing the rownames of the subjects included in each bootstrap dataset.

y_wqs_df

data.frame containing the dependent variable values adjusted for the residuals of a fitted model adjusted for covariates (original values when family = binomial or "multinomial") and the wqs index estimated values.

family

The family specified.

call

The matched call.

formula

The formula supplied.

mix_name

The vector of variable names used to identify the elements in the mixture.

q

The method used to rank varibales included in the mixture.

n_levels

The number of levels of the of the dependent variable when a multinomial regression is ran.

zero_infl

If a zero inflated model was ran (TRUE) or not (FALE)

zilink

The chosen link function when a zero inflated model was ran.

dwqs

A logical value whether two indices were included (TRUE) in the model or not (FALSE).

levelnames

The name of each level when a multinomial regression is ran.

data

The data used in the WQS analysis.

objfn_values

The vector of the b values of the objective function corresponding to the optima values

optim_messages

The vector of character strings giving any additional information returned by the optimizer, or NULL.

gwqslist

List of the output from the rh WQS models.

coefmat

Matrix containing the parameter estimates from each repeated holdout WQS model.

wmat

Matrix containing the weight estimates from each repeated holdout WQS model.

rh

The number of repeated holdout performed.

Author(s)

Stefano Renzetti, Paul Curtin, Allan C Just, Ghalib Bello, Chris Gennings

References

Carrico C, Gennings C, Wheeler D, Factor-Litvak P. Characterization of a weighted quantile sum regression for highly correlated data in a risk analysis setting. J Biol Agricul Environ Stat. 2014:1-21. ISSN: 1085-7117. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1007/s13253-014-0180-3")}.

Curtin P, Kellogg J, Cech N, Gennings C (2021). A random subset implementation of weighted quantile sum (WQSRS) regression for analysis of high-dimensional mixtures, Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, 50:4, 1119-1134. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1080/03610918.2019.1577971")}.

Tanner EM, Bornehag CG, Gennings C. Repeated holdout validation for weighted quantile sum regression. MethodsX. 2019 Nov 22;6:2855-2860. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1016/j.mex.2019.11.008")}. PMID: 31871919; PMCID: PMC6911906.

Renzetti S, Gennings C and Calza S (2023) A weighted quantile sum regression with penalized weights and two indices. Front Public Health 11:1151821. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.3389/fpubh.2023.1151821")}.

See Also

glm, glm.nb, multinom, zeroinfl.

Examples

# we save the names of the mixture variables in the variable "toxic_chems"
toxic_chems = names(wqs_data)[1:34]

# To run a linear model and save the results in the variable "results". This linear model
# (family = gaussian) will rank/standardize variables in quartiles (q = 4), perform a
# 40/60 split of the data for training/validation (validation = 0.6), and estimate weights
# over 2 bootstrap samples (b = 2; in practical applications at least 100 bootstraps
# should be used). Weights will be derived from mixture effect parameters that are positive
# (b1_pos = TRUE). A unique seed was specified (seed = 2016) so this model will be
# reproducible, and plots describing the variable weights and linear relationship will be
# generated as output (plots = TRUE). In the end tables describing the weights values and
# the model parameters with the respectively statistics are generated in the plots window
# (tables = TRUE):
results = gwqs(yLBX ~ wqs, mix_name = toxic_chems, data = wqs_data, q = 4, validation = 0.6,
               b = 2, b1_pos = TRUE, b_constr = FALSE, family = gaussian, seed = 2016)

# to test the significance of the covariates
summary(results)


gWQS documentation built on Nov. 17, 2023, 1:06 a.m.