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  • 1.  Continuous Data Warning in Kruskal Wallis H test

    Posted Tue January 03, 2023 10:00 AM
    Jon, Rick or Anyone,
    When conducting a Kruskal-Wallis H test in SPSS, one component of the output is a bar chart depicting categorical field information (a count of each value of the variable in the data set). Below the chart is a statement that the variable is ordinal but is treated as continuous in the test.

    I am not sure what aspect of the H test treats the data as continuous, as the Kruskal-Wallis H test uses the rank sum of each group for calculations (along with n and m), and a bar chart can properly depict discrete data.

    Can you explain the statement? Thanks in advance.
    Cliff


    #SPSSStatistics


  • 2.  RE: Continuous Data Warning in Kruskal Wallis H test

    Posted Tue January 03, 2023 03:10 PM
    Hi. Sorry for the delay; I have been on vacation.

    No aspect of the KW test itself requires the data to be continuous (i.e., defined in SPSS as a "scale" variable). The message you are seeing refers only to the measurement level of the data sent to the chart. If you were to change the variable to scale from ordinal (using the VARIABLE LEVEL command, for example), the warning would vanish. Also, a legend would appear giving you the descriptive statistics for the variable. Nothing about the KW test would change.

    ------------------------------
    Rick Marcantonio
    Quality Assurance
    IBM
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  • 3.  RE: Continuous Data Warning in Kruskal Wallis H test

    Posted Tue January 03, 2023 03:27 PM
    Hi Rick,
    Thank you. I kind of suspected that the reason lie in presentation of data rather than analysis of data. Have a great 2023.
    Cliff

    Sent from my iPhone