ABSTRACT

Any distribution of responses on several variables can be statistically broken down into three elements: (1) level (mean of individual responses), (2) dispersion (degree of scattering of individual responses around the mean) and (3) correlation (link between individual responses for two variables, that is, the profile). These components represent as many viewpoints on data. Above all, it is the nature of the adopted viewpoint that characterizes a given technique (see Bacher, 1982,300ff).