Data Formatting and Encoding

Basic required format

The {logitr} package requires that data be structured in a data.frame and arranged in a “long” format [@Wickham2014] where each row contains data on a single alternative from a choice observation. The choice observations do not have to be symmetric, meaning they can have a “ragged” structure where different choice observations have different numbers of alternatives. The data must also include variables for each of the following:

  • Outcome: A dummy-coded variable that identifies which alternative was chosen (1 is chosen, 0 is not chosen). Only one alternative should have a 1 per choice observation.
  • Observation ID: A sequence of repeated numbers that identifies each unique choice observation. For example, if the first three choice observations had 2 alternatives each, then the first 6 rows of the obsID variable would be 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3.
  • Covariates: Other variables that will be used as model covariates.

The {logitr} package contains several example data sets that illustrate this data structure. For example, the yogurt contains observations of yogurt purchases by a panel of 100 households [@Jain1994]. Choice is identified by the choice column, the observation ID is identified by the obsID column, and the columns price, feat, and brand can be used as model covariates:

library("logitr")

head(yogurt)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 7
#>      id obsID   alt choice price  feat brand  
#>   <dbl> <int> <int>  <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <chr>  
#> 1     1     1     1      0  8.1      0 dannon 
#> 2     1     1     2      0  6.10     0 hiland 
#> 3     1     1     3      1  7.90     0 weight 
#> 4     1     1     4      0 10.8      0 yoplait
#> 5     1     2     1      1  9.80     0 dannon 
#> 6     1     2     2      0  6.40     0 hiland

This data set also includes an alt variable that determines the alternatives included in the choice set of each observation and an id variable that determines the individual as the data have a panel structure containing multiple choice observations from each individual.

Continuous versus discrete variables

Variables are modeled as either continuous or discrete based on their data type. Numeric variables are by default estimated with a single “slope” coefficient. For example, consider a data frame that contains a price variable with the levels $10, $15, and $20. Adding price to the pars argument in the main logitr() function would result in a single price coefficient for the “slope” of the change in price.

In contrast, categorical variables (i.e. character or factor type variables) are by default estimated with a coefficient for all but the first level, which serves as the reference level. The default reference level is determined alphabetically, but it can also be set by modifying the factor levels for that variable. For example, the default reference level for the brand variable is "dannon" as it is alphabetically first. To set "weight" as the reference level, the factor levels can be modified using the factor() function:

yogurt2 <- yogurt

brands <- c("weight", "hiland", "yoplait", "dannon")
yogurt2$brand <- factor(yogurt2$brand, levels = brands)

Creating dummy coded variables

If you wish to make dummy-coded variables yourself to use them in a model, I recommend using the dummy_cols() function from the {fastDummies} package. For example, in the code below, I create dummy-coded columns for the brand variable and then use those variables as covariates in a model:

yogurt2 <- fastDummies::dummy_cols(yogurt2, "brand")

The yogurt2 data frame now has new dummy-coded columns for brand:

head(yogurt2)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 11
#>      id obsID   alt choice price  feat brand   brand_weight brand_hiland
#>   <dbl> <int> <int>  <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <fct>          <int>        <int>
#> 1     1     1     1      0  8.1      0 dannon             0            0
#> 2     1     1     2      0  6.10     0 hiland             0            1
#> 3     1     1     3      1  7.90     0 weight             1            0
#> 4     1     1     4      0 10.8      0 yoplait            0            0
#> 5     1     2     1      1  9.80     0 dannon             0            0
#> 6     1     2     2      0  6.40     0 hiland             0            1
#> # ℹ 2 more variables: brand_yoplait <int>, brand_dannon <int>

Now I can use those columns as covariates:

mnl_pref_dummies <- logitr(
  data    = yogurt2,
  outcome = 'choice',
  obsID   = 'obsID',
  pars    = c(
    'price', 'feat', 'brand_yoplait', 'brand_dannon', 'brand_weight'
  )
)

summary(mnl_pref_dummies)
#> =================================================
#> 
#> Model estimated on: Fri Nov 01 08:44:06 PM 2024 
#> 
#> Using logitr version: 1.1.2 
#> 
#> Call:
#> logitr(data = yogurt2, outcome = "choice", obsID = "obsID", pars = c("price", 
#>     "feat", "brand_yoplait", "brand_dannon", "brand_weight"))
#> 
#> Frequencies of alternatives:
#>        1        2        3        4 
#> 0.402156 0.029436 0.229270 0.339138 
#> 
#> Exit Status: 3, Optimization stopped because ftol_rel or ftol_abs was reached.
#>                                 
#> Model Type:    Multinomial Logit
#> Model Space:          Preference
#> Model Run:                1 of 1
#> Iterations:                   18
#> Elapsed Time:        0h:0m:0.02s
#> Algorithm:        NLOPT_LD_LBFGS
#> Weights Used?:             FALSE
#> Robust?                    FALSE
#> 
#> Model Coefficients: 
#>                Estimate Std. Error z-value  Pr(>|z|)    
#> price         -0.366581   0.024366 -15.045 < 2.2e-16 ***
#> feat           0.491412   0.120063   4.093 4.259e-05 ***
#> brand_yoplait  4.450197   0.187118  23.783 < 2.2e-16 ***
#> brand_dannon   3.715575   0.145419  25.551 < 2.2e-16 ***
#> brand_weight   3.074399   0.145384  21.147 < 2.2e-16 ***
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#>                                      
#> Log-Likelihood:         -2656.8878788
#> Null Log-Likelihood:    -3343.7419990
#> AIC:                     5323.7757575
#> BIC:                     5352.7168000
#> McFadden R2:                0.2054148
#> Adj McFadden R2:            0.2039195
#> Number of Observations:  2412.0000000