Have you ever wondered if birth order effects vary across ethnic groups? Whether a particular clinical intervention is likely to yield dissimilar outcomes for men and women? Or if the effectiveness of a sales promotion is dependent on a market segment? Questions like these can be effectively answered by using a statistical tool known as moderated multiple regression (MMR). This book provides practical guidance for using MMR to better assess whether the relationship between two quantitative variables is moderated by group membership. Included are discussions and fully worked-out examples of how to conduct and interpret MMR analysis, as well as descriptions of computer programs that allow investigators to check whether their MMR test for moderation can be trusted.
1 What Is a Moderator Variable and Why Should We Care? 1
2 Moderated Multiple Regression 10
3 Performing and Interpreting Moderated Multiple Regression Analyses Using Computer Programs 22
4 The Homogeneity of Error Variance Assumption 42
5 MMR's Low-Power Problem 65
6 Light at the End of the Tunnel: How to Solve the Low-Power Problem 85
7 Computing Statistical Power 97
8 Complex MMR Models 117
9 Further Issues in the Interpretation of Moderating Effects 138
10 Summary and Conclusions 155
App. A Computation of Bartlett's (1937) M Statistic 167
App. B Computation of James' (1951) J Statistic 168
App. C Computation of Alexander's (Alexander & Govern, 1994) A Statistic 170
App. D Computation of Modified f[superscript 2] 171
App. E Theory-Based Power Approximation 173