ABSTRACT
In many investigations, one’s principal interest is in the way that one factor is influenced by several other factors. For example, one can ask how a set of precursor conditions leads a subject to remember one word and to forget another, how a collection of demographic and opinion characteristics relates to a person’s choice of a particular product or vote for a particular candidate, and so on. The notable thing about these situations is that only the influences on a single factor—called here the outcome factor—are important. Relationships among the other factors—the predictors—are of less interest.
