[ADMB Users] Getting the likelihood from a Random Effects model

[Mark Payne]

Dear ADMBers,

It's possible I'm asking a stupid question. But here goes anyway.

As I've mentioned earlier this week, I am doing some random effects
modelling. There are a few different ways that one can set the model in
question up and I would like to use a likelihood ratio test to compare,
for example, two slightly different model configurations. However, as I
understand things, to do this properly I would need to get the actual
likelihood value value out of ADMB, which is calculated internally by
integrating out the random effects using the laplace approximation. Is
it possible to do this? I couldn't find anything in the ADMB-RE
manual... And perhaps more importantly, is this a sensible thing to be
doing... ;-)

On a similar vain, if anyone has any good suggestions about how to
validate such a model and show that it does a good job of representing
the data (other than just eye-balling it), I'd love to hear your ideas!

Cheers,

Mark