Using spherical-radial quadrature to fit generalized linear mixed effects models

Although generalized linear mixed effects models have received much attention in the statistical literature, there is still no computationally efficient algorithm for computing maximum likelihood estimates for such models when there are a moderate number of random effects. Existing algorithms are either computationally intensive or they compute estimates from ail approximate likelihood. Here we propose an algorithm-the spherical-radial algorithm-that is computationally efficient and computes maximum likelihood estimates. Although we concentrate on two-level, generalized linear mixed effects models, the same algorithm can be applied to many other models as well, including nonlinear mixed effects models and frailty models. The computational difficulty for estimation in these models is in integrating, the joint distribution of the data and the random effects to obtain the marginal distribution of the data. Our algorithm uses a multidimensional quadrature rule developed in earlier literature to integrate the joint density. This article discusses how this rule may be combined with ail optimization algorithm to efficiently compute maximum likelihood estimates. Because of stratification and other aspects of the quadrature rule, the resulting integral estimator has significantly less variance than can be obtained through simple Monte Carlo integration. Computational efficiency is achieved, in part, because relatively few evaluations of the joint density may be required in the numerical integration.