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Reconsidering the Reference Category
Sociological Methodology ( IF 6.118 ) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 , DOI: 10.1177/0081175020982632
Sasha Shen Johfre 1 , Jeremy Freese 1
Affiliation  

Social scientists often present modeling results from categorical explanatory variables, such as gender, race, and marital status, as coefficients representing contrasts to a “reference” group. Although choosing the reference category may seem arbitrary, the authors argue that it is an intrinsically meaningful act that affects the interpretability of results. Reference category selection foregrounds some contrasts over others. Also, selecting a culturally dominant group as the reference can subtly reify the notion that dominant groups are the most “normal.” The authors find that three of four recently published tables in Demography and American Sociological Review that include race or gender explanatory variables use dominant groups (i.e., male or white) as the reference group. Furthermore, the tables rarely state what the reference is: only half of tables with race variables and one-fifth of tables with gender variables explicitly specify the reference category; the rest leave it up to the reader to check the methods section or simply guess. As an alternative to this apparently standard practice, the authors suggest guidelines for intentionally and responsibly choosing a reference category. The authors then discuss alternative ways to convey results from categorical explanatory variables that avoid the problems of reference categories entirely.



中文翻译:

重新考虑参考类别

社会科学家通常将分类解释变量(例如性别,种族和婚姻状况)的建模结果作为与“参考”组形成对比的系数来表示。尽管选择参考类别看似随意,但作者认为这是一种本质上有意义的行为,会影响结果的可解释性。参考类别选择在某些方面与其他方面形成对比。同样,选择一个文化上占优势的群体作为参照可以巧妙地证实一个观点,即占优势的群体是最“正常”的。作者发现,《人口统计学》和《美国社会学评论》最近发布了四个表格中的三个包括种族或性别的解释变量使用优势群体(即男性或白人)作为参考群体。此外,这些表很少说明引用是什么:只有一半具有种族变量的表和五分之一具有性别变量的表明确指定了引用类别;其余的留给读者检查方法部分或只是猜测。作为这种看似标准的做法的替代方法,作者提出了有意和负责任地选择参考类别的指南。然后,作者讨论了从分类解释变量传达结果的替代方法,这些方法完全避免了参考类别的问题。

更新日期:2021-01-11
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