fit_mlvar_bayes: Build a Bayesian multilevel VAR network (Mplus DSEM-targeted)

In idiographic: Person-Specific (Idiographic) and Heterogeneous Complex Networks

Build a Bayesian multilevel VAR network (Mplus DSEM-targeted)

Description

Native, pure-R Bayesian estimator for a two-level VAR(1) that statistically reproduces Mplus DSEM output (the estimator behind mlVAR::mlVAR(estimator = "Mplus")) without needing Mplus installed. A conjugate Gibbs sampler estimates a fixed temporal matrix, a within-person residual (contemporaneous) network, and a between-person network, using latent mean centring and Mplus's default priors. Point estimates are posterior medians with posterior SDs and 95% credible intervals.

Usage

fit_mlvar_bayes(
  data,
  vars,
  id,
  day = NULL,
  beep = NULL,
  lags = 1L,
  temporal = c("fixed", "default", "random"),
  contemporaneous = c("fixed", "default"),
  residual = c("fixed", "random"),
  scale = TRUE,
  scaleWithin = FALSE,
  tinterval = NULL,
  impute = FALSE,
  n_iter = 4000L,
  n_burnin = NULL,
  n_chains = 2L,
  thin = 1L,
  seed = NULL,
  min_obs = NULL,
  subject = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE
)

Arguments

data	A data.frame containing the panel data.
vars	Character vector of variable column names to model (length >= 2).
id	Character string naming the person-ID column.
day	Character string naming the day/session column, or NULL.
beep	Character string naming the measurement-occasion column, or NULL. When NULL, row position within each (id, day) block is used.
lags	Integer lag order; only 1 is supported (matches Mplus DSEM defaults here).
temporal	Character. "fixed" (default) fits fixed temporal effects with random intercepts (Mplus DSEM temporal = "fixed"). "random" fits the full DSEM with person-specific temporal matrices B_i and a full random-effect covariance over ⁠(mu_i, vec(B_i))⁠; the temporal network then reports the posterior mean transition matrix and attr(fit, "slope_sd") holds the per-coefficient random-slope SDs. "random" needs more subjects estimable random-effect covariance: at least 2 * (p + p^2) + 1 subjects.
contemporaneous	Character. Only "fixed" is implemented.
residual	Character. "fixed" (default) uses one shared population within-person residual covariance. "random" (only with temporal = "random") gives each subject their own residual covariance Sigma_W_i via a conjugate hierarchical inverse-Wishart (Sigma_W_i ~ IW(Lambda, p + 2), Lambda ~ Wishart), matching DSEM person-specific innovation variances; the reported contemporaneous network is then the population-average residual covariance.
scale	Logical. Global grand-mean/SD standardization of each variable before fitting (Mplus/mlVAR scale = TRUE). Default TRUE.
scaleWithin	Logical. Additionally within-person scale each variable. Default FALSE.
tinterval	Numeric or NULL. When supplied, beep is treated as a continuous time variable and binned onto a regular grid of this width (Mplus TINTERVAL); the integer bin becomes the occasion index for gap-aware lagging, and multiple observations in one (id, day, bin) slot are collapsed to the first. Lagging is gap-aware in all cases: lag-1 pairs are only formed between consecutive occasions, so missing occasions never create spurious lag pairs. Default NULL.
impute	Logical. If TRUE (only with temporal = "random"), missing observations are imputed within the model each MCMC iteration (data augmentation), rather than dropped: each person's series is expanded to a full occasion grid and every latent cell is drawn from its Gaussian full conditional (as an outcome at t and a predictor at t+1), using a vectorised even/odd (checkerboard) block sweep. This matches how Mplus / Stan / JAGS handle missing data and removes the listwise-deletion bias under heavy missingness, at extra computational cost. Default FALSE.
n_iter	Integer. Total MCMC iterations per chain. Default 4000.
n_burnin	Integer. Burn-in iterations discarded per chain. Default n_iter / 2 (Mplus's first-half burn-in convention).
n_chains	Integer. Number of independent chains. Default 2.
thin	Integer. Keep every thin-th post-burn-in draw. Default 1.
seed	Integer or NULL. Base RNG seed (chain c uses seed + c).
min_obs	Integer or NULL. Keep only subjects with at least this many observations before fitting.
subject	Optional vector naming the exact subject(s) to analyse.
verbose	Logical. Emit progress messages. Default FALSE.

Details

The sampler alternates five conjugate full-conditional draws per iteration: the latent person means mu_i (Gaussian), the fixed temporal matrix B (matrix-normal), the within residual covariance Sigma_W (inverse-Wishart), the grand mean alpha (Gaussian), and the between covariance Sigma_B (inverse-Wishart). The lagged predictor is recentred on the current mu_i draw every iteration (latent mean centring). Data are globally standardized first (matching mlVAR's scale = TRUE); the first observation of each block is used only as a lag (condition-on-first).

Validated to statistical (Monte-Carlo-error) equivalence against real Mplus 9 DSEM output on standardized synthetic panels: posterior medians of B, Sigma_W, Sigma_B agree with Mplus to well within a posterior SD.

Value

A net_mlvar_bayes object (also inheriting net_mlvar), a named list of three netobjects (temporal, contemporaneous, between) with posterior-summary attributes. coefs() returns a tidy table with estimate (posterior median), posterior_sd, ci_lower, ci_upper, p (one-tailed), and significant (95% CI excludes 0). Posterior draws and the max Gelman-Rubin PSR are kept in attributes.

See Also

fit_mlvar() (frequentist lmer path), fit_mlvar_mplus() (true-Mplus wrapper).

Examples

set.seed(1)
n_id <- 10; n_t <- 40; vars <- c("A", "B")
rows <- lapply(seq_len(n_id), function(i) {
  y <- matrix(0, n_t, 2)
  for (t in 2:n_t) y[t, ] <- c(0.3, 0.15) * y[t - 1, ] + rnorm(2)
  data.frame(id = i, beep = seq_len(n_t), A = y[, 1], B = y[, 2])
})
d <- do.call(rbind, rows)
fit <- fit_mlvar_bayes(d, vars = vars, id = "id", beep = "beep",
                         n_iter = 500, seed = 1)
print(fit)
coefs(fit)

idiographic documentation built on Aug. 4, 2026, 1:07 a.m.