Project Meeting, 2020-01-30

[jrgant]

Main/casual model estimations

• The model diagnostics look really dicey, particularly the main, but I still have to add a couple of parameters (estimated, just not added to the models yet). SEE UPDATE IN COMMENT THREAD

• Could not accounting for heterogeneity in dissolution rates contributes to this? I saw in the ARTNet paper that the dissolution rate varies by race/ethnicity and age

• Currently focusing on the demographic inputs to the model, but will eventually add HIV diagnosis status too.

MCMLE procedure

• Each time I run the models, the number of steps to convergence (when achieved) differs each time

  • Natural, or am I missing where to set a random seed?

• Despite the procedure's reporting convergence, many of the trace plots don't look great to me.

Estimates of ongoing partnerships

• For the most part I'm getting the same or very similar answers, comparing them to the Epidemics paper, but I can't seem to get the ongoing/inactive partnership breakdowns within main and casual partnerships, respectively, to match.

• A couple of small differences in how I analyzed that I don't think affect the estimates:

  • Imputed age slightly differently
  • Assigned partnership start date differently, but ongoing partnerships flagged based on PARTXONGOING and PARTXMAINONG.

• Perhaps I've assigned ongoingness incorrectly (see: 02b-DataCleaning-Long.R)?

[jrgant]

I had a stupid mistake in my target stat calculations for the nodefactors. Fixing that makes both look a lot better (see attached PDFs). Casual model still has obvious issues.

Just pushed the fix to the repo.
casl_netdx.pdf
main_netdx.pdf