MTO Colloquium
Tuesday, January 6 at 12:45 hrs in WZ 201
Dr. Ellen Hamaker (Utrecht University)
‘Studying lagged relationships: How to get it right’
Lagged relationships—that is, relations between variables measured
at different occasions—can be informative with respect to reciprocal and
regulatory processes. In this talk, I focus on two ways in which lagged
relationships are currently studied, and how each can be improved.
First, in panel research (consisting of T is small and N is large), the
reciprocal effects of two variables are often investigated using the cross lagged panel model (CLPM). In the current presentation I will argue that
this approach does not distinguish between the within-person and betweenperson level, and as a result, may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding
the presence, strength and sign of lagged effects. Second, dynamic
multilevel modeling can be used to model intensive longitudinal data (e.g.,
T>20, N is large). An important aspect of such data are individual
differences in autoregression, as the latter has been interpreted as
regulatory weakness. An important question in this context is whether the
lagged autoregressive predictor should be centered per person or not. I will
show that the general multilevel modeling logic does not apply to this
particular problem.