Using Analysis of Variance With a Dichotomous Dependent Variable: An Empirical Study1

A study was conducted to determine if analysis of variance techniques are appropriate when the dependent variable has a dichotomous (zero‐one) distribution. Several 1‐, 2‐, and 3‐way analysis of variance configurations were investigated with regard to both the size of the Type I error and the Power. The findings show the analysis of variance to be an appropriate statistical technique for analyzing dichotomous data in fixed effects models where cell frequencies are equal under the following conditions: (a) the proportion of responses in the smaller response category is equal to or greater than .2 and there are at least 20 degrees of freedom for error, or (b) the proportion of responses in the smaller response category is less than .2 and there are at least 40 degrees of freedom for error.