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Dealing with heterogeneity in ordinal responses

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Abstract

In sample surveys where people are asked to express their personal opinions it is conceivable to register a high level of indecision among respondents and this circumstance generates sub-optimal statistical analyses caused by large heterogeneity in the responses. In this paper, we discuss a model belonging to the class of generalized cub models which is worthwhile for this kind of surveys. Then, we examine some real case studies where the observed heterogeneity and the subjects’ indecision can be analyzed with the proposed approach leading to convincing interpretations. A comparison with more consolidated models and some concluding remarks end the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Stefania Capecchi & Domenico Piccolo

Authors
  1. Stefania Capecchi
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  2. Domenico Piccolo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Domenico Piccolo.

Additional information

This work has been partially supported by FIRB2012 project at University of Perugia (code RBFR12SHVV) and the frame of Programme STAR (CUP E68C13000020003) at University of Naples Federico II, financially supported by UniNA and Compagnia di San Paolo.

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Capecchi, S., Piccolo, D. Dealing with heterogeneity in ordinal responses. Qual Quant 51, 2375–2393 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-016-0393-3

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