Model settings
Every analysis will be carried out in accordance with the recommendation described in the Stata manual [Presentation of a model diagnostic plot including a trace plot, histogram, autocorrelation plot, and density plot. Trace plot (upper left) should depict relative homogenous static noise without any visualisable patterns. The histograms (upper light) must depict a normal distribution. The autocorrelation plot (lower left) indicates the degree of convergence and good convergence and thereby autocorrelation becomes negligible if a pattern of decrease and ends below 0.1. The density plot (lower right) also illustrates convergence and is interpreted by estimating the similarities between the first and second halfIf convergence issues occur, we will gradually increase the sampling up to 50,000 and the burn-ins gradually up to 100,000. If this does not solve the issues, we will do the analyses by combining sites. Furthermore, if necessary, we will carry out the analysis with and without the problematic covariate(s) and present both analyses [If the initial diagnostic inspection for convergence has proven satisfactory, we plan to assess if changes in the definition of the model result in significant changes in posterior inferences. We therefore plan to compare models with plausible but different priors (including different distributions) and to explore the consequences of inclusion or exclusion of different variables (