Effectively Analyzing Change over Time in Laboratory Research on Stress and Health: A Multilevel Modeling Approach

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc

E-ISSN: 1751-9004|9|10|551-566

ISSN: 1751-9004

Source: SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY COMPASS, Vol.9, Iss.10, 2015-10, pp. : 551-566

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Abstract

AbstractStress and health researchers often utilize standardized laboratory stress tasks to evaluate the physical and psychological consequences of challenging experiences. These laboratory sessions usually include multiple measurements of physical and psychological responses collected over time. Multilevel modeling allows researchers to make use of all available data points to model the trajectory of change over time, and within distinct task periods such as baseline, stressor, and recovery. To effectively predict future health outcomes it is important to examine both stress‐related reactivity and recovery. In this paper, we review the analytic approaches used in recent laboratory stress research and note that many recent articles have aggregated multiple responses, used difference scores, or conducted repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Relatively few studies used a multilevel modeling approach. We highlight the advantages of a multilevel modeling approach and provide an example for using this approach as an alternative to repeated measures ANOVA and difference scores.

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