Multiple imputation with growth modeling

Several days ago, a new user-contributed Stata module "MIM" appears in the Stata software repository. This module can automate the process of combing estimates from multiply imputed data sets and calculating confidence intervals for a wide array of Stata estimation commands, including "XTMIXED". This means that the complete process of imputation, estimation, and post-estimation can be done without leaving Stata.

Multiple imputation with longitudinal data

Have been working with Sarah on revising our comparative paper. One problem we need to solve in this revision is the presence of large amount of missing values. I use "ICE", a user contributed module in Stata to do the imputation. Unfortunately, the built-in estimation procedures does not include "XTMIXED" or "GLLAMM". I have to import the imputed data sets into Mplus and do the estimation there.

A list of survey data that measure well-being

Here is a list of (US) survey data that measure well-being: http://www.nber.org/~kling/surveys/

Latent Growth Model and Repeated Measurement

I had a brief conversation with Linda Adair on the past Wednesday about the issues of catch-up growth. She mentioned that she would have done the analysis differently, had she known the method of latent growth modeling methodology in the 1990s. The idea of standardizing the measurement and calculating the difference score does not make much sense.

I am thinking about doing a Monte Carlo simulation to demonstrate the relationship between two sets of relationships: that revealed by latent growth model, and that revealed by standardized difference scores.

Inequality dropped

Alas, since the mechanism of inequality-obesity has not been fully developed in the literature, and it will be too ambitious for us to tackle this issue in this small project, have to drop it for now.

Will get it back, soon.

Economic inequality as an important moderator

Barry Popkin gave a talk at CCPR seminar today on the global nutritional transition. His research is inspiring in many ways. I had a brief chat with him after the seminar about my idea of economic inequality as an important moderator between the link between obesity and SES and economic development. He thinks it is a good idea and certainly worth the effort to explore it further. I am glad.

More cool stuff for Eclipse

A Eclipse package that handles LaTeX document writing called "TeXlipse" is very cool. It has at least one thing (and maybe more) that WinEdt does not: code folding.

Eclipse can also work with R, the statistical package. A plug-in called "StatET". It is pretty basic right now (especially when compared to another open source software, "Tinn-R"), but I think it has the potential to become a real deal.

For TeXlipse: http://texlipse.sourceforge.net/
For StatET: http://www.walware.de/goto/statet

Eclipse + CDT + MinGW

Following instructions here: http://www.shengfang.org/blog/index.php?job=art&articleid=a_20060605_105543, I successfully configured Eclipse + CDT + MinGW on my Vaio SZ360 laptop. Now I have a rather comfortable C/C++ development environment.

Cool windows utility software to boost performance

I rarely use windows utility software after several unhappy incidents many years ago. But this software changes my mind: http://www.iobit.com/AdvancedWindowsCarePro/index.html

My new Sony SZ360 was having troubles because of too many junk software pre-installed. I was thinking about re-install the whole system. Since I am traveling and did bring many software installation disc with me, I figure maybe I try to "optimize" the system. So far it worked very well. The free utility actually boosts the performance of my laptop, and I am not sure if I want to re-install the whole system.

This is one of the rare moments that I find a software that actually delivers its promise.