Latent variable methods for ordinal data

Abstract

Many datasets include variables whose distributions cannot be represented by the normal, binomial or Poisson distributions we have studied thus far. For example, distributions of common survey variables such as age, education level and income generally cannot be accurately described by any of the abovementioned sampling models. Additionally, such variables are often binned into ordered categories, the number of which may vary from survey to survey. In such situations, interest often lies not in the scale of each individual variable, but rather in the associations between the variables: