Why carve up your continuous data?

Research in Nursing and Health

Volumn 28, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 496-503

  Owen, Steven V ^a   Froman, Robin D ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER AT SAN ANTONIO   (United States)

Author keywords

Continuous variables; Dichotomizing data

Indexed keywords

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE; ARTICLE; HUMAN; NURSING RESEARCH; REGRESSION ANALYSIS; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; STATISTICS;

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE; DATA INTERPRETATION, STATISTICAL; HUMANS; NURSING RESEARCH; REGRESSION ANALYSIS;

EID: 32944479997     PISSN: 01606891     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/nur.20107     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. Austin, P.C., & Brunner, L.J. (2004). Inflation of the type I error rate when a continuous confounding variable is categorized in logistic regression analyses. Statistics in Medicine, 23, 1159-1178.
2. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2005). BMI-Body mass index: BMI calculator. Retrieved June 22, 2005 from http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/ bmi/calc-bmi.htm.
4. Cimprich, B. (1998). Age and extent of surgery affect attention in women treated for breast cancer. Research in Nursing & Health, 21, 229-238.
5. Cohen, J. (1968). Multiple regression as a general data-analytic system. Psychological Bulletin, 70, 426-443.
6. Cohen, J. (1983). The cost of dichotomization. Applied Psychological Measurement, 7, 249-253.
7. Cohen, J. (1988). Power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
8. Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S.G., & Aiken, L.S. (2003). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
9. Dallender, J., Nolan, P., Soares, J., Thomsen, S., & Arnetz, B. (1999). A comparative study of the perceptions of British mental health nurses and psychiatrists of their work environment. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 29, 36-43.
10. Dowe, M.C., Lawrence, P.A., Carlson, J., & Keyserling, T.C. (1997). Patients' use of health-teaching materials at three readability levels. Applied Nursing Research, 10, 86-93.
11. Feldt, L.S. (2005). Estimating the reliability of dichotomous or trichotomous scores. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 65, 28-41.
12. Fraley, R.C., & Spieker, S.J. (2003). Are infant attachment patterns continuously or categorically distributed? A taxometric analysis of strange situation behavior. Developmental Psychology, 39, 387-404.
13. Hankin, B.L., Fraley, R.C., Lahey, B.B., & Waldman, I.D. (2005). Is depression best viewed as a continuum or discrete category? A taxometric analysis of childhood and adolescent depression in a population-based sample. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114, 96-110.
14. Kleinbaum, D.G., Kupper, L.L., Muller, K.E., & Nizam, A. (1998). Applied regression analysis and other multivariable methods. Pacific Grove, CA: Duxbury Press.
15. Lee, I-Min, & Paffenbarger, R.S., Jr. (2000). Associations of light, moderate, and vigorous intensity physical activity with longevity. American Journal of Epidemiology, 151, 293-299.
16. MacCallum, R.C., Zhang, S., Preacher, K.J., & Rucker, D.D. (2002). On the practice of dichotomization of quantitative variables. Psychological Methods, 7, 19-40.
17. Maxwell, S.E., & Delaney, H.D. (1993). Bivariate median splits and spurious statistical significance. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 181-190.
18. McClelland, G. (2002). Negative consequences of dichotomizing continuous predictor variables. Retrieved 22 June 2005 from http://psych.colorado.edu/ ~mcclella/MedianSplit/.
19. Nies, M.A., Buffington, C., Cowan, G., & Hepworth, J.T. (1998). Comparison of lifestyles among obese and nonobese African American and European American women in the community. Nursing Research, 47, 251-257.
20. Nunnally, J.C., & Bernstein, I.H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
21. Pedhazur, E.J. (1997). Multiple regression in behavioral research (3rd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
22. Pedhazur, E.J., & Schmelkin, L.P. (1991). Measurement, design, and analysis: An integrated approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
23. Pridham, K., Brown, R., Clark, R., Limbo, R.K., Schroeder, M., Henriques, J., et al. ( 2005). Effect of guided participation on feeding competencies of mothers and their premature infants. Research in Nursing & Health, 28, 252-267.
24. Rasmussen, J.L. (1989). Data transformation, Type I error rate, and power. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 42, 203-213.
25. Rasmussen, J.L., & Dunlap, W.P. (1991). Dealing with nonnormal data: Parametric analysis of transformed data vs. nonparametric analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 51, 809-820.
26. Rosenthal, R. (1994). Science and ethics in conducting, analyzing, and reporting psychological research. Psychological Science, 5, 127-133.
27. Tabachnick, B.G., & Fidell, L.S. (2001). Using multivariate statistics (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
28. White, R.E., & Erasure-Smith, N. (1995). Uncertainty and psychologic stress after coronary angioplasty and coronary bypass surgery. Heart & Lung: Journal of Critical Care, 24, 19-27.
29. Wilkinson, L., Blank, G., & Gruber, C. (1996). Desktop data analysis with SYSTAT. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.