For example, we are studying child health parameters such as BMI and the effect of factors like environmental, social or genetic. If we have 6-8 different factors affecting BMI, than how we can analyze the single factor effect? Many researchers used age-adjusted, sex-adjusted etc, but how we can adjust many factors together to see the effect of single factor which is the aim of our study? Is there any simple method? Can it be done through SPSS?
The majority of any factors you analysed, you can observe, when you make principal components analysis.
....You can also make structural equation modeling also known as path analysis You can make it on SPSS or STATISTICA....Best regards. Oskar
A multivariate analysis will enable you to explore both single factor effects and their interactions.
Thanks Prof Euan and Fernando Tuya. @Tuya Can GLM be done with SPSS software? How pooling can be done and the interactions are observed?
The simple answer is to perform a linear regression analysis. This is very easy to do in SPSS through the drop down menus - click "analyse", "regression", "linear", or something like that. Set BMI as your outcome / dependent variable, and the other variables as your predictors/independent variables. But how many variables you put in the model, and whether you can fit interaction terms, depends on your sample size. A rough rule of thumb is 10 observations per parameter in your model. With regards to interactions, I don´t believe in fitting interactions unless you have a large enough dataset and you have a theoretical reason for believing in the interaction. Otherwise it´s just data mining and your model will give imprecise results if your dataset is too small. Also, be careful that you don´t put variables into the model that are very strongly correlated with each other.
Dr. Philip thank you so much. Would you like to share more information for the same.
Im considering a similiar question when measuring and comparing changes in BMI after a school intervention program. I am planning a repeat measures analysis
Dianne Siewert
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