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Statistical Analysis
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The second example will include implementation of multiple regression analysis techniques to test a hypothesis in a cross-section study. Mediation means to what extent a variable interferes in a relationship between two variables. In other words, does a variable facilitates or hinders the relationship between any two variables. The current scenario has three variables namely cognitive reappraisal, attachment anxiety and social anxiety. The mediating variable is cognitive reappraisal while the other two variables are attachment anxiety and social anxiety.
Social anxiety is defined as a situation that comes out as a result of some social situation. The major reason for this situation is the fear that some person will evaluate others in some negative ways. Literature suggests that people who experience social anxiety also experience attachment anxiety. This is a situation in which a person thinks negatively of himself and tries to get closer to others. Both these variables are associated with a lower level of cognitive reappraisal. This concept is defined as implementing the appropriate emotion management strategies to minimize the tension by changing the effect of factors generating emotions. Following will be the hypothesis for this study.
There is no impact of cognitive reappraisal on the relationship between attachment anxiety and social anxiety.
In order to test the above hypothesis, a combination of effect size and null hypothesis significance testing. The effect size is a technique to show the strength of relationship between two variables on a numeric scale. In our example, we will take the difference between values of social and attachment anxiety with and without cognitive reappraisal and the resulting figure will be the effect size.
Participants (Sample)
The sample consisted of a total of 253 participants out of which 47 were males and 202 were females and 4 people did not show their gender. The ages of participants were distributed from 18 to 74 years. These participants were selected using the various face book groups and online platform of the University of New England. The psychology students who participated in this study were rewarded with a course credit.
Measures
The social anxiety was measured by using the interpersonal situations discomfort scale which is used to measure the discomfort level experienced by the people under various situations CITATION RVa99 \l 1033 (Dam-Baggen & Kraaimaat, 1999). This scale includes 35 items which show 35 specific social situations. The responses included from 1 none to 5 always. A higher score of a person means that he or she is at a higher level of discomfort under these specific situations.
Attachment anxiety was measured by using a mean score on the attachment anxiety subscale of the experience in close relationships CITATION RCh00 \l 1033 (Fraley, Waller, & A.Brennan, 2000). There is a seven-point scale from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree regarding their feelings in close relationships with higher scores showing that the person is more anxious about the attachment. This subscale comprised of 18 items.
Cognitive reappraisal was assessed by using the Cognitive Reappraisal subscale of the Emotion regulation questionnaire. There were six items on the scale which were judged on a seven-point likert scale from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. Higher average was shown as a higher cognitive reappraisal.
Statistical Analysis
Analyses
There have been a number of statistical analyses run in this project using the SPSS software. The major statistical concept used is the regression analysis between the various variables. The histograms have been presented to check whether the data gathered in various variables is normally distributed or not. Another important consideration in this section was the presence of multicollinearity among the independent variables of a model. This means that the relationships between the independent variables will affect the relationship between independent and dependent variable. There have been considerable diagnostics applied to the data so that this multicollinearity issue can be resolved.
Results
The first variable considered is the attachment anxiety which is shown to be right or positively skewed in the histogram. The variable cognitive reappraisal has been found to be negatively skewed in the relevant histogram. The variable social anxiety is found to be approximately normally distributed by the histogram.
The first regression model studies the relationship by putting social anxiety as the dependent variable while attachment anxiety and cognitive reappraisal have been used as the independent variables. The overall model is weak as shown by the value of r squared which shows that only 17.6 percent variation in the dependent variable has been shown by the independent variables. The value of Durbin-Watson test in the last column shows the positive auto correlation between the variables. In the coefficients table, we see that attachment anxiety has a stronger impact on the social anxiety than cognitive reappraisal shown by a higher coefficient.
When the relationship between social anxiety and attachment anxiety has been studied without mediation, it is observed that the independent variable defines 32.6 percent variation in the dependent variable.
There is a negative relationship found between attachment anxiety as an independent variable and cognitive reappraisal as a dependent variable. This model is also weak as the explained variation is 10.2 %. In order to make a better model, some more explanatory variables should be added to the model.
When social anxiety has been kept as dependent variable while attachment anxiety and cognitive reappraisal have been considered as independent variables, there is a negative relationship between social anxiety and cognitive reappraisal. There is a stronger relationship between social anxiety and cognitive reappraisal as compared to social anxiety and attachment anxiety.
The mediation effect has been analyzed by using the boot strap process. This process is used to obtain robust estimates of standard errors and confidence intervals for values such as mean, median and other similar values. There have been negative relationships found between cognitive reappraisal and attachment anxiety and social anxiety and cognitive reappraisal. There has been a positive total relationship between social anxiety and attachment anxiety. The indirect effects have been analyzed by the bootstrap technique. This technique makes a large number of samples to test the indirect effects of mediation. There have been 5000 such samples made in this example. The direct effects are significant at 0.05 level of significance as shown by the p value in the regression model output. If we see the indirect effects of mediation, there are three different effects to be studied, firstly the cognitive reappraisal effect on the social anxiety, the effect variable showing the indirect effect is the difference between the total and direct effects. The partially standardized indirect effects show that the effects have increased. The completely standardized indirect effects show that the effect has increased further.
This analysis shows the relationships between mediator and both the variables under consideration. The last model shows the mediation effect in the whole model. As shown by the higher effects, we can conclude that there is a significant mediation effect of mediator on the relationship of dependent and independent variable. Thus, we will reject the null hypothesis that there is no mediating effect of cognitive reappraisal on the relationship between social and attachment anxiety. The regression standardized residuals have a normal distribution as shown by the histogram showing social anxiety. This also shows that there is a significant impact of mediator variable on the original relationship of variables.
References
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dam-Baggen, R., & Kraaimaat, F. (1999). Assessing social anxiety: The inventory of Interpersonal Situations. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 25-38.
Fraley, R., Waller, G., & A.Brennan, K. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 350-365.
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