We suggest using the state transition diagram technique for understanding the fundamental univariate dynamics of our subjects. Plotting these state transition diagrams for each variable of each subject of our study has shown that most of the subject tried to maintain low levels of stress and emotionality, find social and material support in their environment, be in familiar situations, and so on. This is on a dynamical basis: if they were in a state of high stress, they would try - and succeed - to return to a state of low stress. This is shown simply by plotting the most frequent transitions for each state.
One limitation of this technique is that drawing transitions for a number of states greater than two or three makes it difficult to understand, the state transition diagram#3511#> becoming cluttered by too many arrows. Plotting only the most frequent transition#3512#> from each state somehow alleviate the problem but not completely.