1

I'm interested in testing for membership similarity between multiple categorical variables.

For instance, let's say that two categorical variables have the following membership:

Group1 = 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3

Group2 = 2, 2, 1, 1, 3, 3

I want to test how consistently samples group together across these variable. The name of (1, 2, 3) is arbitrary and strictly qualitative. In this instance, it would be a perfect match because the 2 matches bidirectionally to 1.

Is there a statistical test that I can apply to test this? I had read that $\chi^2$ might be appropriate, but I'm still a little fuzzy on how to interpret it in my application, because I don't think it would account for the bidirectional relationship between 1 and 2 in the different groups.

Any suggestions?

Mark White
  • 8,712
  • 4
  • 23
  • 61
mforde84
  • 11
  • 1
  • I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Group 1 and Group 2 are two distinct groups... With different people? What do 1, 2, and 3 represent theoretically? Different classes? I was thinking the phi coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi_coefficient but that may not be what you are looking for... – Mark White Jun 30 '17 at 20:59

0 Answers0