Using Association Models in Sociological Research: Some Examples

This paper discusses the log-multiplicative association model and demonstrates how it can be used in a variety of research situations in which ordinal variables are encountered. The examples pertain to (a) reconciling response distributions that differ because of question wording (or other context effects), (b) assigning a metric to an ordinal variable, (c) assigning scale scores to response patterns which arise from a Guttman-type model, and (d) analyzing multiple (ordinal) indicators. The log-multiplicative model presents a unified framework for analyzing each of these problems.