Factor analysis is a technique that is used to reduce a large number of variables into fewer numbers of factors.  This technique extracts maximum common variance from all variables and puts them into a common score.  As an index of all variables, we can use this score for further analysis.  Factor analysis is part of general linear model (GLM) and this method also assumes several assumptions: there is linear relationship, there is no multicollin…

Latent class analysis is a multivariate statistical analysis technique that is used in factor, cluster and regression techniques.  Latent class analysis is a technique where constructs are created from the number of other unobserved variables and these constructs are further used for regression analysis.  It is commonly used to classify the case into latent classes, and supports nominal, ordinal and continuous data.  Structural equation modeling…

Cluster analysis is a class of techniques that are used to classify objects or cases into relative groups called clusters.  Cluster analysis is also called classification analysis or numerical taxonomy.  In cluster analysis, there is no prior information about the group or cluster membership for any of the objects. Cluster Analysis has been used in marketing for various purposes.  Segmentation of consumers in cluster analysis is used on the basi…

Power analysis is directly related to tests of hypotheses. While conducting tests of hypotheses, the researcher can commit two types of errors: Type I error and Type II error. Statistical power mainly deals with Type II errors. It should be noted by the researcher that the larger the size of the sample, the easier it is for the researcher to achieve the 0.05 level of significance.   If the sample is too small, however, then the investigator migh…

Research has several distinctive stages: four of them include the research design, data analysis plan, the statistical analysis, and the reporting of the analysis.   This page will discuss the data analysis planning part of research, which is distinguished from the actual statistical analysis. The data analysis plan refers to determining how the data will be cleaned, transformed, and analyzed. Cleaning the Data The cleaning of data is the remov…

Time series analysis is a statistical technique that deals with time series data.  Time series data means that data is in a series of a particular time period.  The data is considered in three types: Time series data: A set of observations on the values that a variable takes at different times. Cross-sectional data: Data of one or more variables, collected at the same point in time. Pooled data: A combination of time series data and cross-sectio…

Event history analysis helps the researcher to understand the reasons behind why certain individuals are exposed to a higher risk of experiencing certain events of interest than other individuals.  Event history analysis can be accomplished by using special types of methods. Survival analysis consists of a wide variety of methods or techniques that help the researcher to analyze the timing of events. The first step in event history analysis is f…

Reliability refers to the extent to which a scale produces consistent results, if the measurements are repeated a number of times.  The analysis on reliability is called reliability analysis. Reliability analysis is determined by obtaining the proportion of systematic variation in a scale, which can be done by determining the association between the scores obtained from different administrations of the scale.  Thus, if the association in reliabi…

Content analysis is a guide consisting of coded documents of transcripts, newspapers, speech, and films that is used in order to study the counts of word-phrase clusters for the purpose of conducting qualitative statistical analysis.  Usually, researchers in media and communications perform cluster analysis by creating a dictionary of word-phrase clusters in the form of classified conceptual categories for the purpose of counting those conceptua…

Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) is a statistical technique that is the extension of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).  Basically, all these techniques are like the multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA).  Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), etc. are a family of analysis of variance (ANOVA).  T-test is used to compare the means of two groups.  When groups are more than two, then we use …