Paul R. Yarnold
Optimal Data Analysis, LLC
Novometric analysis is used to discriminate perceived peer-group standards for girls seeing boys smoke, vs. for boys seeing girls smoke (class variable), of 3,220 Anglo-American, 936 Mexican-American, and 723 Indian-American (multicategorical attribute) high-school students. Subjects rated their opinion about boys seeing girls smoke, and about girls seeing boys smoke, using a three-point categorical ordinal scale (ordered attribute): approve, do not care, disapprove (coded using 3-1, respectively). Additional categorical attributes were nominal measures of gender and whether or not the subject smoked. The globally optimal model in this application selected only approval rating as an attribute (relatively weak ESS=21.4; D=7.3; p<0.001): 76.3% of ratings of girl smokers indicated disapproval, compared with 54.9% of boy smokers..
odajournal.com 