International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science

2011 Edition
| Editors: Miodrag Lovric

Categorical Data Analysis

  • Alan Agresti
  • Maria Kateri
Reference work entry
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_161

Introduction

A categorical variable consists of a set of non-overlapping categories. Categorical data are counts for those categories. The measurement scale is ordinal if the categories exhibit a natural ordering, such as opinion variables with categories from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” The measurement scale is nominal if there is no ordering. The types of possible analysis depend on the measurement scale.

When the subjects measured are cross-classified on two or more categorical variables, the table of counts for the various combinations of categories is a contingency table. The information in a contingency table can be summarized and further analyzed through appropriate measures of association and models. A standard reference on association measures is Goodman and Kruskal (1979).

Most studies distinguish between one or more response variables and a set of explanatory variables. When the main focus is on the association and interaction structure among a set of response...
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References and Further Reading

  1. Agresti A (2002) Categorical data analysis, 2nd edn. Wiley, New YorkzbMATHGoogle Scholar
  2. Agresti A (2010) Analysis of ordinal categorical data, 2nd edn. Wiley, New YorkzbMATHGoogle Scholar
  3. Bishop YMM, Fienberg SE, Holland PW (1975) Discrete multivariate analysis: theory and practice. MIT Press, CambridgezbMATHGoogle Scholar
  4. Goodman LA, Kruskal WH (1979) Measures of association for cross classifications. Springer, New YorkzbMATHGoogle Scholar
  5. Hosmer DW, Lemeshow S (2000) Applied logistic regression, 2nd edn. Wiley, New YorkzbMATHGoogle Scholar
  6. McCullagh P (1980) Regression models for ordinal data (with discussion). J R Stat Soc B 42:109–142zbMATHMathSciNetGoogle Scholar
  7. Nelder J, Wedderburn RWM (1972) Generalized linear models. J R Stat Soc A 135:370–384Google Scholar
  8. Stokes ME, Davis CS, Koch GG (2000) Categorical data analysis using the SAS system, 2nd edn. SAS Institute, CaryGoogle Scholar
  9. Thompson LA (2008) R (and S-PLUS) manual to accompany Agresti’s Categorical data analysis (2002), 2nd edn. https://home.comcast.net/~lthompson221/Splusdiscrete2.pdf

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alan Agresti
    • 1
  • Maria Kateri
    • 2
  1. 1.University of FloridaGainesvilleUSA
  2. 2.University of IoanninaIonninaGreece