Thanks. I appreciate this isn't strictly an R question and will pursue on another list.
The procedure I followed was inspired from @article{ Author = {Baayen, R. Harald and Milin, Petar}, Title = {Analysing Reaction Times}, Journal = {International Journal of Psychological Research}, Volume = {3}, Number = {2}, Pages = {12--28}, Year = {2010} } Best, Cecile On 18 April 2012 19:55, Bert Gunter <gunter.ber...@gene.com> wrote: > > Cecile: > > On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Cecile De Cat <c.de...@leeds.ac.uk> wrote: > > Hello, > > > > I'm analysing reaction time data from a linguistic experiment (a variant of > > a lexical decision task). To ascertain that the data was normally > > distributed, I used *shapiro.test *for each participant (see commands > > below), but only one out of 21 returns a p value above p.0 05. > > > >> f = function(dfr) return(shapiro.test(dfr$Target.RTinv)$p.value) > >> p = as.vector(by(newdat, newdat$Subject, f)) > >> names(p) = levels(newdat$Subject) > >> names(p[p < 0.05]) > > > > Removing a few outliers > > !! Yikes!! I won't say "Don't do this." But I will say that this can > be a very dangerous and unscientific thing to do, leading to biased, > misleading results. > > per subject doesn't make a difference, and > > "aggressive" removal of outliers (done by subject, for each of the 6 > > conditions ) still results in non-normally distributed data by subject. > > > > Does this invalidate any attempt at multi-level modelling? > > How can we possibly know without knowing in detail the objectives of > the investigation, the nature of the data, and the details of the > analysis you did??! > > On general principles, normality is rarely of any real importance; > lack of independence (or, in general, non-adherence to the covariance > structures specified) usually is. So "any attempt" seems too general > a claim to support. Indeed, a good graphical analysis -- often the > most scientifically informative thing to do anyway -- is almost always > a good thing to do. > > As this has little to do with R, you should follow up on a statistical > list, like stats.stackexchange.com . > > -- Bert > > > > Many thanks in advance for your help. > > > > Cecile > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > > > -- > > Bert Gunter > Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics > > Internal Contact Info: > Phone: 467-7374 > Website: > http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.