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There are four main
principles for organizing values of a nominal variable or a series
of related health outcomes or other items. Alphabetical order, the
order of items used on the original questionnaire or other data
collection instrument, empirical order (ascending or descending
numeric order), and theoretical groupings.
One principle to avoid is
arbitrary order – whatever order you happen to recall the categories
or items you seek or organize! The rest of this lecture will define
and demonstrate each of these other principles and explain how to
determine which one best fits the task at hand.
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