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comparing null deviance to residual deviance in step.glm summaries with

To: s-news@lists.biostat.wustl.edu
Subject: comparing null deviance to residual deviance in step.glm summaries with quasi family
From: "Megan Ferguson" <Megan.Ferguson@noaa.gov>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 09:48:15 -0700
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716)
Hi,

I'm using S-PLUS Professional Edition Version 6.1.2 Release 1 for Windows to build a quasi-likelihood glm with a log link and variance proportional to the mean. I've been using the "glm" command to build a null model, which I then feed to "step.glm" to test a range of variables for inclusion in the model. My code is as follows:

####
null.indglm.stripe10 <- glm(formula = indstripe ~offset(log(oneffort20)),
family = quasi(link = log, variance = "mu"), data = all.10.ind13)

indglm1.stripe10 <- step.glm(null.indglm.stripe10, direction="both", scope=~
frontsd2
+ distarc + distarc2
+ depth + depth2
+ pslope + pslope2
+ temp + temp2
+ sal + sal2
+ tcd + tcd2
+ tcs + tcs2
+ ezd + ezd2
+ log(chcon) + (log(chcon))2
+ beauf + beauf2,
keep=keepit)
####

I would like to look at the percent change in deviance between the null model and the model that step.glm selects. To do this, I used the "summary" command on indglm1.stripe10. The value returned for the null deviance is LESS than that for the residual deviance:

###
Null Deviance: 238718.1 on 14522 degrees of freedom

Residual Deviance: 258702.1 on 14508 degrees of freedom
###

Then I called for a summary of the null model (null.indglm.stripe10) and a much larger value was returned for the null deviance:

###
Null Deviance: 278765.6 on 14522 degrees of freedom

Residual Deviance: 278765.6 on 14522 degrees of freedom
###

It looks like step.glm is using the larger value for the null deviance in computing AIC (I see this when I get the printout from indglm1.stripe10$anova). Why is the estimated value of the null deviance different between the summary of the null model and the summary of the best model from step.glm? Does this have to do with my specification of the quasi-likelihood family? Is the second value of the null deviance derived from a revised estimate of the scale (dispersion) parameter? When does the estimated value of the null deviance change in the step.glm algorithm?

Thanks for your time.

Megan


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