Model construction for intensive longitudinal dyadic data analysis

Abstract: Dyadic studies, in which two persons interacting with each other (called a dyad) are the fundamental unit of analysis, are widely used in psychological studies involving interpersonal phenomena. The integration of such studies with intensive longitudinal designs helps to further investigate the dynamics of both individual behaviors and interpersonal effects during the social interactions. However, there is a lack of appropriate statistical approaches that can adequately answer the dyadic research questions of interest based on the characteristics of intensive longitudinal data. Through simulation and empirical studies, this project will investigate the construction, extension, and applications of appropriate statistical models for intensive longitudinal data of different dyadic designs within the framework of Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (DSEM).
Specifically, the research contents include: (1) constructing two actor-partner DSEMs with different detrending approaches and selecting the better model for intensive longitudinal data from the standard dyadic design; (2) developing an appropriate statistical model for the intensive longitudinal one-with-many data and extending it to more complex data with time trends; (3) developing an appropriate statistical model for the intensive longitudinal round-robin data and extending it to data with time trends; and (4) illustrating the application of the constructed or extended models under three intensive longitudinal dyadic designs. This project will advance the psychological research to gain a deeper and more scientific understanding of changes in individual behaviors and interpersonal effects in the context of social interactions.