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Tackling Longitudinal Round-Robin Data: A Social Relations Growth Model

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Abstract

The social relations model (SRM) is commonly used in the analysis of interpersonal judgments and behaviors that arise in groups. The SRM was developed only for use with cross-sectional data. Here, we introduce an extension of the SRM to longitudinal data. The social relations growth model represents a person’s repeated SRM judgments of another person as a function of time. We show how the model’s parameters can be estimated using restricted maximum likelihood, and how the effects of covariates on interindividual and interdyad variability in growth can be computed. An example is presented to illustrate the suggested approach. We also present the results of a small simulation study showing the suitability of the social relations growth model for the analysis of longitudinal SRM data.

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Notes

  1. Participants may also have provided self-ratings (e.g., how much they like themselves). However, as it is believed that self-ratings result from different processes than other-ratings, they are not included in an SRM analysis. This explains why the diagonal cells of a round-robin table are empty.

  2. We note that the present approach does allow estimating a random effect of the time-varying covariate together with all covariance parameters of the covariate with the relationship component of the slope and the intercept, respectively. However, one would have to adapt the likelihood estimator for this purpose.

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Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Sarah Humberg for very helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leipzig, Neumarkt. 9-19, 04109 , Leipzig, Germany

    Steffen Nestler

  2. University of Münster, Fliednerstr. 21, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Katharina Geukes & Mitja D. Back

  3. University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Roos Hutteman

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  1. Steffen Nestler
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  2. Katharina Geukes
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  3. Roos Hutteman
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  4. Mitja D. Back
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Correspondence to Steffen Nestler.

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This article is dedicated to Irmgard Laufer.

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Nestler, S., Geukes, K., Hutteman, R. et al. Tackling Longitudinal Round-Robin Data: A Social Relations Growth Model. Psychometrika 82, 1162–1181 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-016-9546-5

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