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According to http://r-statistics.co/Beta-Regression-With-R.html, the topline remark is:

Beta regression is used when you want to model Y that are probabilities themselves

Grammar aside, one may assume that using the default specification, the beta-regression will provide log-odds ratios for response. But why should this method be preferred over quasibinomial regression?

Suppose I generate the Y according to the following probability model:

$$ \text{logit} (p) = -2 + 0.5 x$$

with the design so that $x = [-3.0, -2.9, \ldots, 2.9, 3.0]$ and represent $Y$ according to fractions of 10 independent Bernoulli replications.

`%in%` <- function(x, r) x>r[1]& x<r[2]
set.seed(123)
options(warn=-1) ## stupid default errors for GLM that don't matter

do.one <- function() { x <- seq(-3, 3, by=0.1) y <- rbinom(n <- length(x), size = 10, prob = plogis(-2 + 0.5*x))/10 f1 <- glm(y ~ x, family=quasibinomial())

library(betareg) y2 <- y y2[y2 == 0] <- 0.0001 y2[y2 == 1] <- 1-0.0001 f2 <- betareg(y2 ~ x, link='logit')

c( cover1 = 0.5 %in% confint.default(f1, 'x', level = 0.8), cover2 = 0.5 %in% confint.default(f2, 'x', level = 0.8) ) }

out <- replicate(1000, do.one()) rowMeans(out)

In this simulated example, even with small replications, the coverage of the quasibinomial model is much closer to the nominal 80% CI limit whereas the beta regression is anticonservative, achieving approximately 70% coverage. Is this not the correct way to construct CIs for a betareg model? Or is this not the appropriate interpretation of covariate values?

> rowMeans(out)
cover1 cover2 
 0.787  0.699 
AdamO
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    Your y is generated from the binomial distribution, so why would you expect beta regression to work? You should use logistic regression (binomial family). What happens if you simulate your data from beta distribution? There's also https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/29038/35989 – Tim Nov 01 '22 at 18:32
  • @tim maybe you can suggest how the linear model is formulated for the beta model. For instance what is the interpretation of the parameters if we use the logit link? I notice that the parameter estimates appear unbiased in this example. Maybe there's another where beta is better. – AdamO Nov 01 '22 at 19:11

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