"Paired" test for 3 variables

Posted by Hugh Sandoz on Jun 07, 2009; 3:21pm
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/Paired-test-for-3-variables-tp1089169.html

Hi,

I've conducted a research in which each sample/respondent is tested for 3 attributes (how much he/she likes A, B and C). A, B and C are not repeated measurements of the same thing, but measurements of different things from the same person. I need to compare the means of A, B and C, and see which is larger/smaller than which (basically multiple pairwise comparisons).

Because the responses are matched by respondents, should I first test for independence of A, B and C before deciding if I should use ANOVA (independent variables) or something like a paired t-test (but for 3 variables)? Or should I assume that they are dependent and directly go for the latter?

And how would I do a test for 3 dependent/matched variables? If I'm not wrong, repeated-measures one-way ANOVA only works for repeated measures of the same thing. Should I use multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)?

I've tried running MANOVA on SPSS with 3 dependent variables and no fixed factors - it's given me significant results for Pillai's Trace, Wilk's Lambda, Hotelling's Trace and Roy's Largest  Root. However, I have no idea what these results mean despite looking up the SPSS manual, nor do I know which mean is bigger than which. As far as I can tell, no pairwise comparisons have been conducted. Can anyone please advise?

Thanks in advance.