by jhines » Mon Aug 24, 2009 1:03 pm
Deviance is the difference in likelihood between the saturated model and the selected model. By adding parameters to the model, the deviance should be reduced (model fits better). So, basing model selection on deviance will result in choosing the model with the most parameters.
AIC imposes a penalty (2.0 for each parameter) for adding parameters. So, if two parameters are very similar and are estimated with a single parameter in one model, and two parameters in another model, the difference in deviances for the two models will be small (< 2.0) and you would choose the model with fewer parameters. If the actual parameters are very different, the difference in deviance will be larger than the penalty, and you will choose the model with more parameters.
If you're using MARK, deviance is computed for you and presented in the results table. If you're using PRESENCE, you can use the log-likelihood value in place of deviance.
Cheers,
Jim