Posts tagged ‘use’

Use and Misuse of Chi-square

Before using any adaptations of chi-square statistic, please spend a minute or two to ponder whether your strategy with chi-square belongs one of these categories.

1. Lack of independence among the single events or measures
2. Small theoretical frequencies
3. Neglect of frequencies of non-occurrence
4. Failure to equalize \sum O_i (the sum of the observed frequencies) and \sum M_i (the sum of the theoretical frequencies)
5. Indeterminate theoretical frequencies
6. Incorrect or questionable categorizing
7. Use of non-frequency data
8. Incorrect determination of the number of degrees of freedom
9. Incorrect computations (including a failure to weight by N when proportions instead of frequencies are used in the calculations)

From “Chapter 10: On the Use and Misuse of Chi-square” by K.L.Delucchi in A Handbook for Data Analysis in the Behavioral Sciences (1993). Delucchi acknowledged these nine principle sources of error to Lewis and Burke (1949), entitled “The Use and Misuse of the Chi-square” published in Psychological Bulletin. Continue reading ‘Use and Misuse of Chi-square’ »