Re: st: Looking for courses in non-linear modelling and imputation techniques

[Maarten Buis <maartenlbuis@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Jacobs, David wrote:
> Splines seem extremely useful, but referees (in sociology at least) often give me trouble about the theoretical justification for particular cut points when I use this specification.  And sociological theory isn't terribly informative about such issues.
>
> I certainly agree that quadratics or for that matter cubics (which soc. referees also don't like) are procrustean, while dummies throw away information.
>
> Does anyone on the list have advice about how to justify splines when theory in one's discipline (and others) is mute about cut points?

If you are using splines in a linear regression you can use -nl- to
estimate the cut-point. I posted an example of how to do that in Stata
 here: <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/lwgate/STATALIST/archives/statalist.0801/date/article-1035.html>
I don't tend to take those estimated cut-points too seriously, but
they are an effective way of pleasing referees. (No one who is
refereeing one of my papers is listening, right?)

Otherwise, you can consider a plot of partial residuals against the
original predictor with the spline function overlaid to show that the
spline (hopefully) captures the key features in the data. That is
after all the real justification when theory does not give you one.

Hope this helps,
Maarten

--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany


http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------

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