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I have the following conceptual model:

IV: Personality trait (measured on likert scale)

Moderator: low trust vs high trust

DV: initial price offer in a negotiation ( values can be between 5-15)

I have a within-subjects design, so first i assessed the personality of the respondent, then each respondent was asked to input an offer given the scenario (scenario1: low trust towards their negotiation partner). Then in a secod scenario (scenario2: higher trust towards their negotiation partner) they had to input a second offer.

I want to measure the effect of personality on the initial offer and how this relationship is moderated by the level of trust.

What analysis should I use in SPSS to account for the moderation effect but also for the repeated measures?

my coach is suggesting mixed-effect model but i am not familiar what it is.

1 Answer 1

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A mixed model, also called a multilevel model or a hierarchical linear model does sound like a good choice (though with only 2 observations per participant, a mixed ANCOVA would probably work just as well, or a single-level model with clustered standard errors).

However, if you use multilevel models it would probably be good for you to first read a bit about them in general if you are unfamiliar with them, but how to do it: in SPSS you first need to arrange your data in long format so that each participant has 2 rows (if you have 2 observations per participant), like this

id scenario dv trait
1  high     3  3.33
1  low      2  3.33
2  high     5  4.11
2  low      1  4.11
...

Then, you can use SPSS's Analyze...Mixed Models...Linear and first put your participant id variable into the "subjects" box. You can likely ignore the repeated box (it's for specifying a residual correlation structure for different time points, mostly relevant for longitudinal designs). Then just use the model specification menus as usual. Remember to tick the "Statistics...Parameter estimates for the fixed effects" that gives you the fixed regression coefficients for the scenario, trait, and their interaction.

The following syntax should also work:

MIXED dv BY scenario sex WITH trait age
  /FIXED=scenario trait sex age scenario*trait | SSTYPE(3)
  /METHOD=REML
  /PRINT=SOLUTION
  /RANDOM=INTERCEPT | SUBJECT(id) COVTYPE(CS). 

COVTYPE(CS) means that the within-person correlation structure is compound symmetry, meaning that within-person correlations between all time points are assumed to be equal (for a given person); that is enough here as you only have 2 time points per participant.

(In longitudinal designs you may want to specify within-participant correlation structures that take into account the temporal closeness/non-closeness of observations, but that's not relevant here.)

EDIT. So, I don't love multilevel models for this type of designs with 2 observations per cluster (here: participant), they are a bit of an overkill. The simplest thing model-wise would be to use clustered standard errors, but I'm not the best to advice on them because I never use them (they are "not a thing" in my field) and I haven't even tried using them in SPSS (only in R). And unfortunately, it seems that SPSS tutorials for this are not the best. I think "SPSS Complex Samples" is a relevant search term. If you can use R, there are plenty of pretty clear tutorials.

However, if you have any experience in conducting ANOVAs, better yet repeated-measures ANOVAs in SPSS, I'd consider using repeated-measures ANOVA with the personality trait as a covariate. It's simple and gives you what you want and is basically designed for situations like yours. Unlike with multilevel models you need to have your data in short format , i.e.

id high low trait
1  3    2   3.33
2  5    1   4.11
...

and then use Analyze...General Linear model...Repeated measures... and put in your repeated factor as having 2 levels, click "Define", put the "high" and "low" variables into the "Within-Subjects Variables" box and the trait into the "Covariates" box. The analysis enters the interaction between trait and the high-low variable as a default, and takes care of the non-independence of your observations. See this tutorial, though they have an additional between-subject factor in the example ("Exam") that you don't have, ignore that.

However, note that repeated-measures ANOVA/ANCOVA assumes sphericity - equal variances across all conditions. Be sure to check that this applies if you choose this test. See here for explanation of sphericity.

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10 Comments

Thank you very much! My coach also suggested that I can cluster standard errors. If I go with that option as you mentioned i could use a single level model. Could you please elaborate which one do you recommend for my data and how can I cluster the standard errors? I would probably go with this option then as I am ver tight on time.
Thank you! I have other covariates as well in my model, could I still use ANOVA and get good reaults on Personality if I use sex and age as covariates too?
Yes, you can do that (you'd put sex in the between-subject box), but SPSS forces the interactions between the within-factor (your "scenario") and each covariate into the RM-ANCOVA, which unnecessarily consumer degrees of freedom if you're not interested in scenario x sex and scenario x age interactions. To avoid this you need the Advanced statistics add-on. But if you're fine with putting in all the interactions and have a relatively large dataset, this might still be the easiest way.
But, now that other covariates appeared, I might perhaps prefer a multilevel model after all. This here is a pretty detailed guide.
Okay, I will try to do the mixed effects model. however, when I run that I cannot find the relationship corfficient for personality and offer. Do you know what should I put for fixed and what for random effects to test this relationship: how does personality influence offer and how trust level moderates the relationhsip?
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