Child Care and Early Education Research Connections

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The research glossary defines terms used in conducting social science and policy research, for example those describing methods, measurements, statistical procedures, and other aspects of research; the child care glossary defines terms used to describe aspects of child care and early education practice and policy.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z
Multinomial Distribution
A distribution that arises when a response variable is categorical in nature. For example, if a researcher recorded the type of child care a child used, then the distribution of the counts in these categories would be multinomial. The multinomial distribution is a generalization of the binomial distribution to more than two categories. If the categories for the response variable can be ordered, then the distribution of that variable is referred to as ordinal multinomial.
Multinomial Logit Model
A special form of regression used to analyze the relationship between predictor variables and a categorical outcome variable. The multinomial logit is used when the categorical outcome variable has more than two values, e.g., marital status could be never married, married, or divorced.
Multiple (Linear) Regression
A statistical technique used to find the linear relationship between an outcome (dependent) variable and several predictor (independent) variables.
Multivariate Analysis
Any of several statistical methods for examining more than one predictor (independent) variable or more than one outcome (dependent) variable or both. Allows researchers to examine the relation between two variables while simultaneously controlling for the influence of other variables. For example, a researcher might examine the relationships between children's race/ethnicity and their early reading skills while controlling for the influence of family social economic status (SES).
Multivariate Normal Distribution
The multivariate normal distribution is a generalization of the one-dimensional (univariate) normal distribution. The multivariate normal distribution has two or more random variables and every linear combination of the values of these variables has a univariate normal distribution.
Multivariate Probit Model
A model that is used to estimate several correlated bivariate outcomes jointly. For example, if parental decisions regarding sending their children to public schools and voting in favor of a school budget are correlated (both decisions are binary), then the multivariate probit model would be appropriate for jointly predicting these two choices on an individual-specific basis.
Mutually Exclusive
Said of variables, events or conditions that can be placed into one category and no other. If there is no overlapping part between two events, we say they are mutually exclusive. However, mutually exclusive doesn't mean the two events are independent.
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