Automatic regrouping of strata in the chi-square test

2017

Pearson´s chi-square test is widely employed in social and health science to analyze categorical data and contingency tables and to assess sample representativeness. For the test to be valid the sample size must be big enough to provide a minimum number of expected elements per category. If the researcher chooses to regroup the strata in order to solve the failure on the minimum size requirement, the existence of automatic re-grouping procedures in statistical software would be very useful, especially when tests are applied sequentially. After comprehensively reviewing the software that can carry out this test, we find that, with a few exceptions, there is no automatic regrouping of the str…