Research Article A multivariate time-series approach to marital interaction Analyse ehelicher Interaktionen - Annäherungen mit Hilfe multivariater Zeitreihenmodelle Jörg Kupfer 1 , Burkhard Brosig 2* , Elmar Brähler 3 1 Department of Medical Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany 2 Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany 3 Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany GMS Psychosoc Med 2005;2:Doc08 provisional PDF Abstract Time-series analysis (TSA) is frequently used in order to clarify complex structures of mutually interacting panel data. The method helps in understanding how the course of a dependent variable is predicted by independent time-series with no time lag, as well as by previous observations of that dependent variable (autocorrelation) and of independent variables (cross-correlation). The study analyzes the marital interaction of a married couple under clinical conditions over a period of 144 days by means of TSA. The data were collected within a course of couple therapy. The male partner was affected by a severe condition of atopic dermatitis and the woman suffered from bulimia nervosa. Each of the partners completed a mood questionnaire and a body symptom checklist. After the determination of auto- and cross-correlations between and within the parallel data sets, multivariate time-series models were specified. Mutual and individual patterns of emotional reactions explained 14% (skin) and 33% (bulimia) of the total variance in both dependent variables (adj. R², p<0.0001 for the multivariate models). The question was discussed whether multivariate TSA-models represent a suitable approach to the empirical exploration of clinical marital interaction. Zusammenfassung Zeitreihenanalysen werden häufig zur Klärung komplexer Strukturen von wechselseitig interagierender Längsschnittdaten eingesetzt. Diese Methodik kann helfen zu verstehen, wie der Verlauf einer abhängigen Variablen aus den früheren Werten dieser Variablen (Autokorrelation) oder aus zeit- gleichen oder vorhergehenden Werten der unabhängigen Variablen (Kreuzkorrelationen) vorher- gesagt werden kann. * Corresponding author: HSD Dr. med. Burkhard Brosig, Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Ludwigstr. 76, 35392 Giessen, Germany, Tel: ++49 641 99 45633, Fax: ++49 641 99 45659, eMail: Burkhard.Brosig@psycho.med.uni-giessen.de