Relative Importance Analysis With Multicategory Dependent Variables: An Extension and Review of Best Practices

Determining independent variable relative importance is a highly useful practice in organizational science. Whereas techniques to determine independent variable importance are available for normally distributed and binary dependent variable models, such techniques have not been extended to multicategory dependent variables (MCDVs). The current work extends previous research on binary dependent variable relative importance analysis to provide a methodology for conducting relative importance analysis on MCDV models from a dominance analysis (DA) perspective. Moreover, the current work provides a set of comprehensive data analytic examples that demonstrate how and when to use MCDV models in a DA and the advantages general DA statistics offer in interpreting MCDV model results. Moreover, the current work outlines best practices for determining independent variable relative importance for MCDVs using replicable examples on data from the publicly available General Social Survey. The present work then contributes to the literature by using in-depth data analytic examples to outline best practices in conducting relative importance analysis for MCDV models and by highlighting unique information DA results provide about MCDV models.