Solved – Interaction terms and effect sizes in multiple regression

effect-sizeinteractionmultiple regressionr

I know there are similar questions on here, but I can't quite find an answer that covers all of what I need. I am running multiple regression in r with two predictor variables and sometimes an interaction term e.g.:

model1 = lm(Measure1 ~ Variable 1 + Variable 2)
model2 = lm(Measure1 ~ Variable 1 + Variable 2 + Variable2:Variable 3)

I am first wondering, what is the best way to calculate the effect size specifically of variable 2 in both instances. I know because the second formula includes an interaction I can't necessarily use the standard coefficient values, and I'd like to get the effect size in a consistent way between the two formulas. Also, if it's important, the DV is continuous, but the variables are dummy coded variables (e.g. on/off a drug and gender). Along these lines, is there a good way to determine when I should use an interaction in the equation when I have many dependent variables I want to look at? Creating a plot of each manually doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do so…

Best Answer

If you include an interaction term, then "the" effect no longer exists. Instead you have multiple effects: one for each level of the other variable with which you created the interaction. This is the very point of including interactions, so there is no way around it.