Conceptual and Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Dyadic Data
This chapter provides an introduction to the analysis of nonindependent data from dyads. We begin by examining current practices regarding dyadic and group research in social and personality psychology and compare those findings with our original survey of research published in 2008 and 2009. We then present basic definitions, as well as a brief introduction to multilevel modeling and structural equation modeling for dyads. We present SPSS and Mplus syntax to specify the models we describe. We then discuss cross-sectional and longitudinal dyadic designs and provide examples of how these have been used to advance social and personality psychological science. For cross-sectional designs we provide details of the actor–partner interdependence model and two other dyadic models as alternatives—the common fate model and the mutual influence model. For longitudinal designs, we discuss dyadic growth models.