wec

A novel method for modelling interaction between categorical variables

This article expands the procedure for ‘weighted effect coding’ is expanded to regression models that test interaction effects. Within this framework, the weighted effect coded interaction displays the extra effect on top of the main effect found in a model without the interaction effect. This offers a promising new route to estimate interaction effects in observational data, where different category sizes often prevail.

To apply the procedures introduced in this paper, called weighted effect coding, procedures are made available for R, SPSS, and Stata. For R, we created the ‘wec’ package.


Grotenhuis, M., Ben Pelzer, Eisinga, R., Nieuwenhuis, R., Schmidt-Catran, A., & Konig, R. (2016). A novel method for modelling interaction between categorical variables. International Journal of Public Health, 1–5. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-016-0902-0