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Offset vs fixed factor in a mixed poisson model

1 message · Highland Statistics Ltd

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On 17/01/2013 07:00, r-sig-mixed-models-request at r-project.org wrote:
Valerie,
Keep in mind that you are using an exponential relationship in a 
GLM...at least if you use the log link.
If you use a covariate as an offset then you essentially saying: double 
the value of the variable used for the offset, double the numbers 
(strictly speaking: the expected value). Quite often sampling effort is 
used as an offset as it is not really interesting to model a 
cause-effect relationship between sampling effort and your response.

If you have a model with:

glm(y ~ x, family = poisson)
glm(y ~ x + offset(z), family = poisson)

and x is significant in the first model...but not in the second, then 
either the offset explains most variation, or x and the offset are 
highly correlated? Plot x versus z...and plot x versus log(z)...

Alain