Including a fixed effect
During the previous exercise, you built a model with only a global intercept. Usually, hierarchical models include predictor variables of interest.
The county-level birth data includes the average age of the mother, AverageAgeofMother
. Perhaps this explains a county's birth rate.
In this case, the formula in R "knows" AverageAgeofMother
is numeric and will treat the corresponding coefficient as a slope.
Build a hierarchical model with county_births_data
, which has been loaded for you, and include a fixed-effect. Does the average age of the mother at birth predict the birth rate?
This exercise is part of the course
Hierarchical and Mixed Effects Models in R
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Include the AverageAgeofMother as a fixed effect within the lmer and state as a random effect
age_mother_model <- lmer(___ ~ ___ + (1 | ___),
county_births_data)
summary(age_mother_model)