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Table 4 Significant temporal dependencies between psychological variables and abdominal pain

From: Pain and psyche in a patient with irritable bowel syndrome: chicken or egg? A time series case report

Psychological /coping variable

Type of dependency

VAR order

Granger- Causality Test

% FEVD

h = 10

Instantaneous correlation

F

p

Nervousness (N)

SS → N

2

3.39

.04

.17

.24

Tension (T)

SS → T

2

9.49

< .01

.31

.32

Catastrophizing (C)

SS → C

2

16.3

< .01

.41

.42

Hopelessness (H)

SS → H

2

6.04

< .01

.35

.53

Coping: Positive Thoughts (CPT)

SS → CPT

1

8.09

< .01

.24

.43

CPT → SS

1

4.34

.04

.06

 

Coping: Imagining pain outside the body (CIP)

SS → CIP

2

3.74

.03

.12

.07

  1. SS, somatic symptoms, measured by the item “How severe is your abdominal (tummy) pain”
  2. A significant Granger Test implies that the first variable has impact on the second variable. The test statistic is F(df1,df2), where df1 is a number of tested restrictions (k) and df2 = 2 T − 4 k − 2 for bivariate VAR models, T is length of time series, k is order of VAR model. Forecast Error Variance (FEV) Decomposition estimates the amount of variance in a dependent variable, explained by a corresponding cause variable during a period h; h = 10 means 10 days