Reconsidering the Reference Category
Reconsidering the Reference Category
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DOI：
10.1177/0081175020982632
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发表时间：
2021-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Freese, Jeremy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Johfre, Sasha Shen;Freese, Jeremy
社会科学家经常提出分类解释变量的建模结果，如性别、种族和婚姻状况，作为代表与“参考”群体的对比的系数。尽管选择参照范畴可能看起来很武断，但作者认为，这是一个本质上有意义的行为，会影响结果的可解释性。参考类别的选择突出了一些对比。此外，选择一个文化上占主导地位的群体作为参照，可以巧妙地将占主导地位的群体是最“正常”的概念具体化。作者发现，最近发表在《人口学和美国社会学评论》上的包含种族或性别解释变量的四个表格中，有三个使用了占主导地位的群体(即男性或白人)作为参考群体。此外，这些表格很少说明引用的是什么：只有一半的带有种族变量的表格和五分之一的带有性别变量的表格明确指定了引用类别；其余的让读者来检查方法部分或简单地猜测。作为这种明显的标准做法的替代，作者建议有意识地和负责任地选择参考类别的指导方针。然后，作者讨论了从范畴解释变量中传达结果的替代方法，这些方法完全避免了参照范畴的问题。
Social scientists often present modeling results from categorical explanatory variables, such as gender, race, and marital status, as coefficients representing contrasts to a "reference" group. Although choosing the reference category may seem arbitrary, the authors argue that it is an intrinsically meaningful act that affects the interpretability of results. Reference category selection foregrounds some contrasts over others. Also, selecting a culturally dominant group as the reference can subtly reify the notion that dominant groups are the most "normal." The authors find that three of four recently published tables in Demography and American Sociological Review that include race or gender explanatory variables use dominant groups (i.e., male or white) as the reference group. Furthermore, the tables rarely state what the reference is: only half of tables with race variables and one-fifth of tables with gender variables explicitly specify the reference category; the rest leave it up to the reader to check the methods section or simply guess. As an alternative to this apparently standard practice, the authors suggest guidelines for intentionally and responsibly choosing a reference category. The authors then discuss alternative ways to convey results from categorical explanatory variables that avoid the problems of reference categories entirely.