Inferential statistics (like p-values, confidence intervals and
standard errors) may be biased in mixed models when the number of clusters
is small (even if the sample size of level-1 units is high). In such cases
it is recommended to approximate a more accurate number of degrees of freedom
for such inferential statitics. The m-l-1 heuristic is such an approach
that uses a t-distribution with fewer degrees of freedom (dof_ml1
) to
calculate p-values (p_value_ml1
), standard errors (se_ml1
)
and confidence intervals (ci(method = "ml1")
).
Note that the "m-l-1" heuristic is not applicable for complex
multilevel designs, e.g. with cross-classified clusters. In such cases,
more accurate approaches like the Kenward-Roger approximation (dof_kenward()
)
is recommended. However, the "m-l-1" heuristic also applies to generalized
mixed models, while approaches like Kenward-Roger or Satterthwaite are limited
to linear mixed models only.