StressAnxiety: Dependency of Anxiety on Stress

In gkwreg: Generalized Kumaraswamy Regression Models for Bounded Data

Dependency of Anxiety on Stress

Description

Data from a study examining the relationship between stress and anxiety levels among nonclinical women in Townsville, Queensland, Australia.

Usage

StressAnxiety

Format

A data frame with 166 observations on 2 variables:

stress

numeric. Stress score transformed to the open unit interval (0, 1). Original scale ranged from 0 to 42 on the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS).

anxiety

numeric. Anxiety score transformed to the open unit interval (0, 1). Original scale ranged from 0 to 42 on the DASS.

Details

Both stress and anxiety were assessed using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), ranging from 0 to 42. Smithson and Verkuilen (2006) transformed these scores to the open unit interval (without providing specific details about the transformation method).

The dataset is particularly interesting for demonstrating heteroscedastic relationships: not only does mean anxiety increase with stress, but the variability in anxiety also changes systematically with stress levels. This makes it an ideal case for beta regression with variable dispersion.

Source

Data from Smithson and Verkuilen (2006) supplements. Original data source not specified.

References

Smithson, M., and Verkuilen, J. (2006). A Better Lemon Squeezer? Maximum-Likelihood Regression with Beta-Distributed Dependent Variables. Psychological Methods, 11(1), 54–71.

Examples

require(gkwreg)
require(gkwdist)

data(StressAnxiety)

# Example 1: Basic heteroscedastic relationship
# Mean anxiety increases with stress
# Variability in anxiety also changes with stress
fit_kw <- gkwreg(
  anxiety ~ stress |
    stress,
  data = StressAnxiety,
  family = "kw"
)
summary(fit_kw)

# Interpretation:
# - Alpha: Positive relationship between stress and mean anxiety
# - Beta: Precision changes with stress level
#   (anxiety becomes more/less variable at different stress levels)

# Compare to homoscedastic model
fit_kw_homo <- gkwreg(anxiety ~ stress,
  data = StressAnxiety, family = "kw"
)
anova(fit_kw_homo, fit_kw)

# Example 2: Nonlinear stress effects via polynomial
# Stress-anxiety relationship often shows threshold or saturation effects
fit_kw_poly <- gkwreg(
  anxiety ~ poly(stress, 2) | # quadratic mean
    poly(stress, 2), # quadratic precision
  data = StressAnxiety,
  family = "kw"
)
summary(fit_kw_poly)

# Interpretation:
# - Quadratic terms allow for:
#   * Threshold effects (anxiety accelerates at high stress)
#   * Saturation effects (anxiety plateaus at extreme stress)

# Test nonlinearity
anova(fit_kw, fit_kw_poly)

# Example 3: Exponentiated Kumaraswamy for extreme anxiety patterns
# Some individuals may show very extreme anxiety responses to stress
fit_ekw <- gkwreg(
  anxiety ~ poly(stress, 2) | # alpha: quadratic mean
    poly(stress, 2) | # beta: quadratic precision
    stress, # lambda: linear tail effect
  data = StressAnxiety,
  family = "ekw"
)
summary(fit_ekw)

# Interpretation:
# - Lambda: Linear component captures asymmetry at extreme stress levels
#   (very high stress may produce different tail behavior)

# Example 4: McDonald distribution for highly skewed anxiety
# Anxiety distributions are often right-skewed (ceiling effects)
fit_mc <- gkwreg(
  anxiety ~ poly(stress, 2) | # gamma
    poly(stress, 2) | # delta
    stress, # lambda: extremity
  data = StressAnxiety,
  family = "mc",
  control = gkw_control(method = "BFGS", maxit = 1500)
)
summary(fit_mc)

# Compare models
AIC(fit_kw, fit_kw_poly, fit_ekw, fit_mc)

# Visualization: Stress-Anxiety relationship
plot(anxiety ~ stress,
  data = StressAnxiety,
  xlab = "Stress Level", ylab = "Anxiety Level",
  main = "Stress-Anxiety Relationship with Heteroscedasticity",
  pch = 19, col = rgb(0, 0, 1, 0.3)
)

# Add fitted curve
stress_seq <- seq(min(StressAnxiety$stress), max(StressAnxiety$stress),
  length.out = 100
)
pred_mean <- predict(fit_kw, newdata = data.frame(stress = stress_seq))
lines(stress_seq, pred_mean, col = "red", lwd = 2)

# Add lowess smooth for comparison
lines(lowess(StressAnxiety$stress, StressAnxiety$anxiety),
  col = "blue", lwd = 2, lty = 2
)
legend("topleft",
  legend = c("Kumaraswamy fit", "Lowess smooth"),
  col = c("red", "blue"), lwd = 2, lty = c(1, 2)
)

gkwreg documentation built on Nov. 27, 2025, 5:06 p.m.