Data Visualization – Best Method to Visualize Large Interaction Between Two Factors

anovadata visualizationinteractionpost-hocr

In a simple experiment I asked participants to make acceptability judgements (9-point Likert scale) when they observed different animated virtual characters. I have two factors: character (7 levels) and motion (5 levels).

Two-way ANOVA showed significant interaction between the above factors, so I want to explore this interaction better. I've run a post-hoc Tukey test and looked at critical differences between mean acceptability ratings for all characters, and all levels of motion. It's a large matrix (rough example can be seen in this post in stackoverflow) that might not be entirely clear for the interpretation. It's been suggested to me that maybe I could have visualize or statistically explore this interaction between characters and motion better.

Any suggestions how I could do that (preferably in R)?

Best Answer

If you are interested in visualizing an interaction effect specifically, you can subtract main effects (i.e., average factor effect, say $x_i$ and $x_j$) from each treatment mean (combination of factor levels, indexed by $i$ and $j$) based on the relation

$$\gamma_{ij} = \bar x_{ij} - \bar x_i - \bar x_j + \bar x$$

This will yield $i$ (or $j$) curves where every value are expressed as deviation from a baseline which is simply the grand mean ($\bar x$). This idea is developed in Howell, Statistical Methods for Psychology. Below is an illustration with one of Howell's dataset (a study on number of words recalled as a function of subjects' age and recall condition, N=100).

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