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this may be a stupid question, but I have run a mixed effects model in R and the estimates, Standard Error and dfs are are all numbers such as -2.115e-01. I've only seen these in p-values before and I'm not sure to report them when they have no clear relationbship to the original scale (Bark scale ranging from -4 to +2). What is the best way to discuss these findings?

Thanks

tryskew8 = lmer(skewness~ respondent + respondent : duration+ (1|word) + (1|video), REML = F , clean)
summary(tryskew8)

Fixed effects:
                                 Estimate Std. Error         df t value Pr(>|t|)    
(Intercept)                    -2.115e-01  1.775e-01  3.844e+01  -1.192 0.240738    
respondentgay.referee          -4.270e-01  2.876e-01  4.355e+01  -1.485 0.144834    
respondentcoming.out           -1.412e+00  3.111e-01  2.465e+01  -4.538 0.000127 ***
respondentout                  -7.549e-01  3.069e-01  2.335e+01  -2.460 0.021703 *  
respondentphil.in:duration      3.125e-04  1.411e-03  3.823e+02   0.222 0.824788    
respondentgay.referee:duration -2.118e-03  1.950e-03  3.873e+02  -1.086 0.277937    
respondentcoming.out:duration   2.144e-03  1.837e-03  3.832e+02   1.167 0.243932    
respondentout:duration          2.449e-03  1.626e-03  3.769e+02   1.506 0.132956
kjetil b halvorsen
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Brad
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  • Your significant effects are not that small compared to a range from -4 to 2, are they? – jay.sf May 24 '20 at 17:48
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    Maybe it's just that the scientific notation is crossing you up. "-2.115e-01" indicates -0.2115: just move the decimal point left (if "-") or right (if "+") the number of places indicated after the "e". You can also set R to avoid that notation -- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9397664/force-r-not-to-use-exponential-notation-e-g-e10#9397821. – rolando2 May 24 '20 at 18:10
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    Your model seems to include an interaction term involving duration without a corresponding term for duration on its own. That's almost never a good idea, and can affect the values and interpretations of the interaction coefficients. See this page for example. Also, think carefully about your choice to use maximum likelihood instead of REML for fitting for model to the data unless you have a very large study. – EdM May 24 '20 at 18:12
  • Excellent, thanks very much! Now the scientific notation makes sense, I've also added a term for duration to the model – Brad May 26 '20 at 11:08

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