Greetings Statalisters,
Suppose I have two variables where one is the outcome of
interest (dichotomous) and the other is ordinal (mild,
uncomfortable, annoying, & debilitating). My question is this:
is it possible to change the "interval" between strata of the
ordinal variable, that is, if the clinician can justify
asserting that, for example, "annoying" is 'five times worse'
than "mild" and "debilitating" is 'eight times worse' than
"mild", is there a way to incorporate that assessment into a
non-parametric test, e.g. Wilcoxon rank sum? In short, I
suppose I am addressing two issues: interval length of the
ordinal variable and "importance" of the severe responses
(annoying & debilitating) relative to mild. Would something
like this even be acceptable statistically and justifiable
mathematically (assuming it is clinically justifiable), not to
mention, possible in STATA? Unfortunately, my cursory search
of the literature (and STATA help files) did not turn up
anything relevant, any suggestions and/or references I may take
advantage of?
Many Thanks,
Clint Thompson
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