ABSTRACT
The primary function of correspondence analysis is to treat, as already shown above, tables of frequency data. In this case, the technique is called simple or statistical correspondence analysis. One may imagine that the frequency of responses to questionnaire items is crossed with respondents’ membership in groups defined by their social status. Reading such a data table provides information on the relations between individuals’ group membership and their responses to a given question. Correspondence analysis can be used to analyze the rows and columns of such a table. It is particularly useful when its dimensions and the complexity of relations make its content difficult to understand. In this case, this technique not only detects a link between various SR components but also sheds light on the relationship between these representational components and individuals’ integration into groups, for example of different social status.
