ABSTRACT
If you want to investigate whether or not there are groups of cases in your dataset and what the characteristics of these groups are, then cluster analysis is the tool for you. It may be that you reckon that there are groups, and you may even have a good idea about how these groups are made up. In this case, you can do a cluster analysis to see if you are right. Alternatively, you may have very little idea about what groups exist and may then want to use cluster analysis as an exploratory process.
