Methods for quantifying ordinal variables: a comparative study

Sara Casacci () and Adriano Pareto ()

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 2015, vol. 49, issue 5, 1859-1872

Abstract: The solution to the problem of ‘quantification’ or scoring, i.e., assigning real numbers to the qualitative modalities (categories) of an ordinal variable, is of primary relevance in data analysis. The literature offers a wide variety of quantification methods, all with their pros and cons. In this work, we present a comparison between an univariate and a multivariate approach. The univariate approach allows to estimate the category values of an ordinal variable from the observed frequencies on the basis of a distributional assumption. The multivariate approach simultaneously transforms a set of observed qualitative variables into interval scales through a process called optimal scaling. As an example of application, we consider the Bank of Italy data coming from the “Survey on Household Income and Wealth” in order to ‘quantify’ a self-rating item of happiness. A simulation study to compare the performance of the two approaches is also presented. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Data analysis; Quantification; Scoring; Optimal scaling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11135-014-0063-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:49:y:2015:i:5:p:1859-1872

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11135-014-0063-2

Access Statistics for this article

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology is currently edited by Vittorio Capecchi

More articles in Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().