A Hybrid NUTS-Gibbs Sampler with State Space Marginalization for Estimation of Dynamic Structural Equation Models with Binomial Outcomes

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Main Authors: Sørensen, Øystein, McCormick, Ethan M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Sørensen, Øystein
McCormick, Ethan M.
author_facet Sørensen, Øystein
McCormick, Ethan M.
contents Dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) is widely used for analyzing intensive longitudinal data (ILD). Although many ILD have categorical (Bernoulli or binomially distributed) responses, currently available Metropolis-within-Gibbs samplers for estimating DSEMs are limited to using the probit link and the Bernoulli distribution. These samplers scale poorly with increasing model complexity and/or data size. Here, we present a hybrid sampler -- alternating between one step of the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) and one Gibbs step -- which solves both of these problems: the Gibbs step naturally handles Pólya-Gamma distributed latent variables arising from binomially distributed responses with a logit link, and the NUTS step utilizes a Kalman filter to exactly marginalize over latent states, alleviating the need to sample these variables. We demonstrate in simulation experiments that the proposed sampler is more efficient than alternative algorithms, and that it makes DSEM estimation with binomial data feasible for larger data and models than what has previously been possible. We also illustrate its use in an example application of predicting panic attacks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_29647
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Hybrid NUTS-Gibbs Sampler with State Space Marginalization for Estimation of Dynamic Structural Equation Models with Binomial Outcomes
Sørensen, Øystein
McCormick, Ethan M.
Computation
Methodology
Dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) is widely used for analyzing intensive longitudinal data (ILD). Although many ILD have categorical (Bernoulli or binomially distributed) responses, currently available Metropolis-within-Gibbs samplers for estimating DSEMs are limited to using the probit link and the Bernoulli distribution. These samplers scale poorly with increasing model complexity and/or data size. Here, we present a hybrid sampler -- alternating between one step of the No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS) and one Gibbs step -- which solves both of these problems: the Gibbs step naturally handles Pólya-Gamma distributed latent variables arising from binomially distributed responses with a logit link, and the NUTS step utilizes a Kalman filter to exactly marginalize over latent states, alleviating the need to sample these variables. We demonstrate in simulation experiments that the proposed sampler is more efficient than alternative algorithms, and that it makes DSEM estimation with binomial data feasible for larger data and models than what has previously been possible. We also illustrate its use in an example application of predicting panic attacks.
title A Hybrid NUTS-Gibbs Sampler with State Space Marginalization for Estimation of Dynamic Structural Equation Models with Binomial Outcomes
topic Computation
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29647