Hello, I tried doing as you suggested (added a cubic term as a covariate), it did not help. I am using the linear mixed models procedure and I am not back translating. I attach the output in which I conduct the normal procedure first and then go on with the cubic term. The covariate is indeed not normal, I used LN function which normalized the distribution but it also gives the same combination of significant/insignificant results between tables.
Any other ideas? I'm pretty confused.
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Karolina Ziembowicz
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Original Message:
Sent: Mon November 08, 2021 04:06 PM
From: Jon Peck
Subject: Linear mixed models - interpretation of results
I am not sure which procedure you are running. Are you backtranslating table names from another language?
But if you get different significance results as a factor from as a covariate, that might suggest a nonlinearity, so you might want to try adding a quadratic term as a covariate or fitting a cubic spline, which you could create with the STATS SPLINES extension command.
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Original Message:
Sent: 11/8/2021 11:50:00 AM
From: Karolina Ziembowicz
Subject: RE: Linear mixed models - interpretation of results
Ok, I get it. Thanks for the nice clarification. So - are you saying I should not worry that the estimate and t-test are insignificant in the "tests of fixed effects" table? Should I report the value of F and ignore the "estimates of fixed effects" table?
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Karolina Ziembowicz
Original Message:
Sent: Mon November 08, 2021 11:24 AM
From: Jon Peck
Subject: Linear mixed models - interpretation of results
If you treat a continuous variable as a factor, you are giving it the number of degrees of freedom as the number of levels (ignoring the constant term). So that allows for a nonlinear relationship between the presumed factor and the dependent variable while as a covariate it would only pick up a linear relationship with one degree of freedom.
In other words, treating it as a factor is equivalent to creating a dummy variable for each level.
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Original Message:
Sent: 11/8/2021 6:32:00 AM
From: Karolina Ziembowicz
Subject: Linear mixed models - interpretation of results
Hello, I have a mixed model wiith one categorical and one continuous predictor. When I input the continuous one as a fixed effect, both the "tests of fixed effects" and "estimates of fixed effects" table gives significant results for the continuous variable. When I input it as a covariate, suddenly there is a discrepancy between the tables - in "tests of fixed effects" it remains significant, while in "estimates of fixed effects" it becomes insignificant.
This is strange for me. If a continuous variable cannot be a fixed factor (as I understood from reading the web) - why do these results differ in both tables??
Also - there is one more difference between these two analyses - the categorical variable's estimate changes the sign. What statistics should I report to follow APA style?
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Karolina Ziembowicz
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#SPSSStatistics