higher order interaction

in an analysis of variance, the joint effect of three or more independent variables on the dependent variable. For example, a researcher could conduct a study to assess the effect of a particular treatment (e.g., treatment vs. no treatment) as well as the effect of education level and socioeconomic status on cognitive functioning. This design would allow an examination of the main effects for treatment, education, and socioeconomic status individually; the two-way interactions between treatment and education, education and socioeconomic status, and treatment and socioeconomic status; and the higher order three-way interaction between treatment, education, and socioeconomic status.

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Psychology term of the day

November 23rd 2024

pretest–posttest design

a research design in which the same assessment measures are given to participants both before and after they have received a treatment or been exposed to a condition, with such measures used to determine if there are any changes that could be attributed to the treatment or condition. A more complete version in which participants are randomly assigned to a treatment group or a control group is a pretest–posttest control-group design: All individuals are assessed at the beginning of the study, the intervention is presented to the treatment group but not the control, and then all individuals are measured again. The presence of the control group allows the researcher to identify any preexisting disparities between the groups and thus to more definitely attribute differences between the pre- and posttest scores to the treatment of interest. Also called before–after design; pre–post design.