Canonical Correspondence Analysis in Social Science Research

Abstract

The use of simple and multiple correspondence analysis is well established in social science research for understanding relationships between two or more categorical variables. By contrast, canonical correspondence analysis, which is a correspondence analysis with linear restrictions on the solution, has become one of the most popular multivariate techniques in ecological research. This restricted form of correspondence analysis can be used profitably in social science research as well, as is demonstrated in this paper. We first illustrate the result that canonical correspondence analysis of an indicator matrix, restricted to be related to an external categorical variable, reduces to a simple correspondence analysis of a set of concatenated (or “stacked”) tables. Then we show how canonical correspondence analysis can be used to focus on, or partial out, a particular set of response categories in sample survey data. For example, the method can be used to partial out the influence of missing responses, which usually dominate the results of a multiple correspondence analysis.