Estimating reliability of within-person couplings in a multilevel framework

• Verfasst von: Neubauer, Andreas B. [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Voß, Andreas [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Mertens, Ulf K. [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Estimating reliability of within-person couplings in a multilevel framework
• Verf.angabe: Andreas B. Neubauer, Manuel C. Voelkle, Andreas Voss, Ulf K. Mertens
• Jahr: 2020
• Umfang: 12 S.
• Fussnoten: Published online: 11 Jan 2019 ; Gesehen am 23.01.2020
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Journal of personality assessment
• Ort Quelle: New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 1971
• Jahr Quelle: 2020
• Band/Heft Quelle: 102(2020), 1, Seite 10-21
• ISSN Quelle: 1532-7752
• DOI: doi:10.1080/00223891.2018.1521418
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 1688152040

Abstract

Within-person couplings play a prominent role in psychological research and previous studies have shown that interindividual differences in within-person couplings predict future behavior. For example, stress reactivity—operationalized as the within-person coupling of stress and positive or negative affect—is an important predictor of various (mental) health outcomes and has often been assumed to be a more or less stable personality trait. However, issues of reliability of these couplings have been largely neglected so far. In this work, we present an estimate for the reliability of within-person couplings that can be easily obtained using the user-modifiable R code accompanying this work. Results of a simulation study show that this index performs well even in the context of unbalanced data due to missing values. We demonstrate the application of this index in a measurement burst study targeting the reliability and test-retest correlation of stress reactivity estimates operationalized as within-person couplings in a daily diary design. Reliability and test-retest correlations of stress reactivity estimates were rather low, challenging the implicit assumption of stress reactivity as a stable person-level variable. We highlight key factors that researchers planning studies targeting interindividual differences in within-person couplings should consider to maximize reliability.