On the Practice of Dichotomization of Quantitative Variables

MacCallum, R. C., Zhang, S., Preacher, K. J., & Rucker, D. D. (2002). On the Practice of Dichotomization of Quantitative Variables. Psychological Methods, 7(1), 19-40.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2002

DOI

10.1037/1082-989x.7.1.19

Link

https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.7.1.19

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Domain-specific

• Point-biserial correlation coefficient
  • Point-biserial correlation measures standardized linear separation between two naturally defined groups on a continuous outcome.

Mechanisms

• Threshold Band Map
  • Its failure mode is the clustering illusion and the tyranny of the boundary — bands impose hard categorical lines on a continuous proximity axis

    This sourceShows that dichotomizing a continuous variable imposes an artificial cut point and treats observations on opposite sides as categorically different.

Verification

This reference passed the adversarial substantiation pipeline: it was checked to exist and to support the claim it is attached to. See how references were verified.

Registry ID ref:2e190f760c35 · see in the full table