ABSTRACT
Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA's) popularity in parts of the social sciences stems to a large degree from the impact of Pierre Bourdieu's sociological studies of social class, power and inequality. In Distinction, Bourdieu included some variables as capital indicators when constructing the space of social positions: indicators on social origin and trajectory, economic capital, scholastic and cultural capital and various forms of consumption. With increasing experience, the researcher will recognize some frequently occurring cloud structures when doing an MCA. A strongly stratified cloud or a cloud that is split into two highly concentrated and isolated sub-clouds can also be the result of a methodological artifact, for instance the filtering of respondents in a questionnaire. To code a data set implies that the researcher is imposing a structure or a classification on the same set, and this structure will necessarily have an impact on the results.
