Stability of cardiovascular responses across subjects and situations: a systematic approach

This study describes the reproductivity of behaviorally elicited cardiovascular response patterns. 111 subjects were studied over a 1-year interval. Physiological variables recorded were heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and respiratory rate. Test-retest stability coefficients were calculated and compared with the results of a study with a 3-day interval between test sessions. The physiological data are depicted in a four-dimensional data box (subjects, situations, replications, variables), and the variance components of the factors and their interactions are estimated. Some of the interaction components are associated with specificity principles and with temporal stability. To comprehensively describe special aspects of stability, measures for stability were generated (concerning subjects, situations, or both), adopting basic ideas from the covariance partitioning approach. The stability measures were compared with simple test-retest reliability coefficients and with generalizability coefficients, and systematic relationships between the stability measures are discussed.