Simultaneous analysis of multivariate polytomous variates in several groups.

The frequencies of m independent p-way contingency tables are analyzed by a model that assumes that the ordinal categorical data in each of m groups are generated from a latent continuous multivariate normal distribution. The parameters of these multivariate distributions and of the relations between the ordinal and latent variables are estimated by maximum likelihood. Goodness-of-fit statistics based on the likelihood ratio criterion and the Pearsonian chisquare are provided to test the hypothesis that the proposed model is correct, that is, it fits the observed sample data. Hypotheses on the invariance of means, variances, and polychoric correlations of the latent variables across populations are tested by Wald statistics. The method is illustrated on an example involving data on three five-point ordinal scales obtained from male and female samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]