An Introduction to Statistics in Linguistics (7): How to Analyze Crosstabulation Tables (Part 1)

Abstract

When analyzing qualitative data, it is important to present them in the form of crosstabulation tables so that the procedures used are evident. This paper introduces the terminology involved in crosstabulation tables and then presents the methods for testing crosstabulation tables with different conditions and several categories. Crosstabulation tables of two conditions (with and without correspondence) and i × j tables (without correspondence) are used. Additionally, the adverse effects of category mergers are discussed, including (1) increasing the quantity of data so that the number of data in each cell exceeds a certain number and (2) employing Fisher’s exact probability test as a method for dealing with cases, in which it is inappropriate to apply the chi-square test.