Print

Print


Dear all (but most likely, Dr. McLaren),

I'm sorry to revisit this issue -- I know it comes up over and over, and
the answer is always "you need to use flexible factorial, or download GLM
Flex." I just have a couple of (hopefully) clarifying questions.

I have a fully within-subject, 3x2x2, where the 3 levels of the first
factor are waves (i.e., measurements at different ages). Based on the
advice of this forum, I plan to use the flexible factorial procedure and
produce contrasts for main effects, 2-way interactions with the time
factor, and simple effects of time within each level of the other two
factors. My understanding is that flexible factorial correctly partitions
the variance by subject, and uses the correct number of degrees of freedom.
I also understand that Henson and Penny provide a way to correctly
partition the variance using a full factorial approach here (
http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~wpenny/publications/rik_anova.pdf).

My question is whether anything has changed as of SPM 12 that would let one
correctly model the group level using full factorial with simple contrasts
from the first level (as opposed the the Henson and Penny approach). I've
heard somewhere that one doesn't usually see substantive differences
whether one uses full or flexible factorial, so I'm wondering if I've
missed an important aspect of previous discussions.

Thank you so much for any advice,
~John

John Flournoy, MS
PhD Student, Psychology, University of Oregon
Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab <http://dsn.uoregon.edu/> &
Personality and Social Dynamics Lab <http://pages.uoregon.edu/sanjay/>