Estimating psychopathological networks: Be careful what you wish for

PLoS One. 2017 Jun 23;12(6):e0179891. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179891. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Network models, in which psychopathological disorders are conceptualized as a complex interplay of psychological and biological components, have become increasingly popular in the recent psychopathological literature (Borsboom, et. al., 2011). These network models often contain significant numbers of unknown parameters, yet the sample sizes available in psychological research are limited. As such, general assumptions about the true network are introduced to reduce the number of free parameters. Incorporating these assumptions, however, means that the resulting network will lead to reflect the particular structure assumed by the estimation method-a crucial and often ignored aspect of psychopathological networks. For example, observing a sparse structure and simultaneously assuming a sparse structure does not imply that the true model is, in fact, sparse. To illustrate this point, we discuss recent literature and show the effect of the assumption of sparsity in three simulation studies.

MeSH terms

  • Datasets as Topic
  • Humans
  • Logistic Models
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Neural Networks, Computer*
  • Psychopathology / methods*
  • Research Design

Grants and funding

This work was supported by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) “research talent” Grant Number 406-11-06 (http://www.nwo.nl/en). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.