Some Problems in Reporting Use of Discriminant Analyses

Abstract

There are some problems in the reporting of many numerical analyses—this includes reporting in newspapers, on television, in journal articles, and in books. In this article, the authors focus on problems in reporting results of predictive discriminant analysis (PDA) and descriptive discriminant analysis (DDA) in journal articles. The main issue addressed pertains to information that should be reported for PDA or DDA studies, and what results may be deleted with little loss to hamper judgment calls about the research quality and validity of conclusions. Twenty applications of discriminant analyses that appeared in 19 behavioral science journals (1998-2000) were scrutinized with respect to quality and quantity of reported results. The conclusion is not very positive. PDA and DDA results were very often mixed, which may not be too surprising because study purposes were typically not very explicit. Results specific to PDA and to DDA were very seldom reported with any meaningful interpretations.