Analyzing the effects of group members’ characteristics: A guide to the group actor–partner interdependence model

Abstract

Members enter groups with different characteristics, for example, gender and ethnicity, and the Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (GAPIM) systematically tests several different effects of group composition for a given characteristic. By finding submodels of these effects, the GAPIM allows for empirically testing many theoretically meaningful models of differences within groups. Among the models that can be tested are models of diversity, relational demography, group norms, and contrast. This paper describes the four different steps of a GAPIM analysis and illustrates its application with two datasets. The first is an experimental dataset where gender composition is manipulated by presenting individuals with pictures of group members with whom they presumably would interact. The second dataset is a national sample of churchgoers who are members of different congregations, in which the effects of both a categorical and a continuous composition variable on a member-level outcome are assessed. SPSS and R syntax used for running the GAPIM is provided for each of these examples.

Exploring Group Composition among Young, Urban Women of Color in Prenatal Care: Implications for Satisfaction, Engagement, and Group Attendance

“…Criteria regarding group size (i.e., three women) were guided by recommendations for Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model analyses (Garcia, Meagher, & Kenny, 2014). Meeting these analysis criteria were 557 women from Study 1 and 375 women from Study 2.…”

“…Analyses were guided by recommendations described by Kenny, Garcia, and colleagues to test the Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Garcia et al, 2014; Kenny & Garcia, 2012). This model proposes that group members’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are related to who they are in relation to other members of their group, and who other group members are in relation to each other.…”

An Overview of Classroom Composition Research on Social-Emotional Outcomes: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Another recent approach that takes the potential relevance of different distributional measures characterizing group composition systematically into account is the so-called group actor-partner interdependence model (Garcia, Meagher, & Kenny, 2015;Kenny & Garcia, 2012). For example, for an individual outcome with gender as the group composition variable, Kenny and Garcia (2012) proposed to include in the model the gender of the individual actor, gender of the other group members, actor similarity in gender to the others in the group, and the others' similarity in gender.…”

Modeling cohesion change in group psychotherapy: the influence of group leader behaviors and client characteristics

“…First, group identification theory suggests that one's perceptions of similarity to a group relates strongly to their perceptions of belongingness. In one recent example, actor-partner modelling was used to find that the more similar in gender a person was to other members of a discussion group, the greater was their perceived satisfaction with that group (Garcia, Meagher, and Kenny, 2014). This suggests that the great degree of similarity between persons with respect to gender and racial identity in the present investigation may have in part contributed to the high levels of cohesion observed.…”

“…While other researchers have begun to apply the One-With-Many design to group therapy (e.g. Garcia, Meagher, & Kenny, 2014), these often account for group roles by including the number of persons occupying a given role (termed actor similarity). While useful in examining how having more members with similar characteristics in groups may relate to outcomes, it is not applicable to a leadership role in which there is exactly one leader per group and a varying numbers of clients.…”