apply_empirical_bayes_shrinkage: Apply empirical-Bayes shrinkage to fitted non-person facet...

In mfrmr: Estimation and Diagnostics for Many-Facet Measurement Models

Apply empirical-Bayes shrinkage to fitted non-person facet estimates

Description

Post-hoc shrinkage helper that augments an mfrm_fit with James-Stein / empirical-Bayes shrunk estimates for each non-person facet. The shrinkage variance \hat{\tau}^2 is estimated by method of moments from the facet-level point estimates and their standard errors:

\hat{\tau}^2 = \max\!\left(0, \frac{1}{K}\sum_{j=1}^{K}\hat{\delta}_j^{2} - \overline{\mathrm{SE}^2}\right),

where the first term is the population variance of the facet point estimates around their known mean of zero (the mfrmr sum-to-zero identification pins the facet mean exactly at 0, so no degree of freedom is consumed by mean estimation). The shrinkage factor is B_j = \mathrm{SE}_j^2 / (\hat{\tau}^2 + \mathrm{SE}_j^2), and the shrunk point / standard error are \hat{\delta}_j^{EB} = (1 - B_j)\hat{\delta}_j and \mathrm{SE}_j^{EB} = \sqrt{(1 - B_j)\mathrm{SE}_j^2}. The posterior SE form treats \hat{\tau}^2 as known; it omits the Morris (1983, eqs. 4.1-4.2, p. 51) confidence-interval correction v \cdot \hat{\delta}_j^{2} with v = 2 B_j^2 / (K - r - 2), where r is the number of regression coefficients used to model the prior mean (under mfrmr's sum-to-zero pinning, r = 0, so the divisor is K - 2). This correction adds variance proportional to the squared deviation \hat{\delta}_j^{2}, accounting for uncertainty in \hat{\tau}^2. Under the equal-variance assumption \hat{\delta}_j^{2} \approx \hat{\tau}^2, the omitted variance is on the order of 2 / (K - 2) times the reported posterior variance V(1 - B_j), so the true SE is approximately \sqrt{1 + 2/(K - 2)} times the reported ShrunkSE. Magnitudes: SE understated by ~73\ at K = 8, ~7\ ShrunkSE as a lower bound rather than a calibrated posterior SE.

Usage

apply_empirical_bayes_shrinkage(
  fit,
  facet_prior_sd = NULL,
  shrink_person = FALSE
)

Arguments

fit	An mfrm_fit from fit_mfrm() with a non-empty facets$others table.
facet_prior_sd	Optional numeric scalar. When supplied, the shrinkage variance is fixed at facet_prior_sd^2 instead of being estimated from the data. Useful when a prior is elicited from expert knowledge or a previous fit.
shrink_person	Logical. When TRUE, the same empirical-Bayes shrinkage is also applied to fit$facets$person. Default FALSE, since MML person estimates already reflect a N(0, sigma^2) prior.

Details

fit$facets$others gains ShrunkEstimate, ShrunkSE, and ShrinkageFactor columns, and fit$shrinkage_report records the per-facet \hat{\tau}^2, mean shrinkage, and effective degrees of freedom (\mathrm{EffectiveDF}_f = \sum_j (1 - B_j), which matches the "effective number of parameters" defined by Efron & Morris, 1973). The original Estimate / SE columns are preserved.

Value

The same mfrm_fit, with augmented columns and a new shrinkage_report list entry, and with fit$config$facet_shrinkage set to "empirical_bayes".

Typical workflow

1. Fit the model as usual with fit_mfrm().

2. Call apply_empirical_bayes_shrinkage(fit) when small-N facets are present (see facet_small_sample_review()).

3. Report both the original and shrunk estimates in the manuscript, citing Efron & Morris (1973). build_apa_outputs() will add the sentence automatically when fit$config$facet_shrinkage is set.

References

Efron, B., & Morris, C. (1973). Combining possibly related estimation problems. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 35(3), 379-402.

Efron, B. (2021). Empirical Bayes: Concepts and methods (Technical report). Department of Statistics, Stanford University. https://efron.ckirby.su.domains/papers/2021EB-concepts-methods.pdf

Morris, C. N. (1983). Parametric empirical Bayes inference: Theory and applications. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 78(381), 47-55.

See Also

fit_mfrm() (which accepts facet_shrinkage directly), facet_small_sample_review(), compute_facet_icc().

Examples

toy <- load_mfrmr_data("example_core")
fit <- fit_mfrm(toy, "Person", c("Rater", "Criterion"), "Score",
                method = "JML", maxit = 30)
fit_eb <- apply_empirical_bayes_shrinkage(fit)
fit_eb$shrinkage_report
# Look for:
# - `Tau2` is the estimated between-level prior variance per facet.
#   `Tau2 = 0` means the data did not justify any pooling and the
#   shrunken estimates equal the raw estimates (`MeanShrinkage = 0`).
# - `MeanShrinkage` near 0 = little movement, near 1 = heavy pooling
#   toward 0. Small-N facets typically pull values further than
#   well-identified ones.
# - `EffectiveDF` is the implied "effective number of parameters"
#   (Efron & Morris 1973); EffectiveDF much smaller than the row
#   count of the facet means most levels were pooled together.
head(fit_eb$facets$others[, c("Facet", "Level", "Estimate",
                               "ShrunkEstimate", "ShrinkageFactor")])
# Look for: rows where `ShrinkageFactor` is large (close to 1) had
#   their estimates pulled most strongly toward the facet mean (0).

mfrmr documentation built on June 13, 2026, 1:07 a.m.