When you are trying to discover whether there is a relationship between two categorical

variables, why is it useful to transform the counts in crosstabs to percentages of row or

column totals? Once you do this, how can you tell if the variables are related?
Ans: An analysis of the relationship between two variables that are qualitative, i.e. categorical,
or quantitative. It is possible for two variables to be related in three ways:

1. The variables are both categorical. An association is analyzed by comparing conditional

probabilities and representing the data graphically with contingency tables. Gender and class
standing are examples of categorical variables.

2. There is a quantitative component to both variables. A response variable is compared to an

explanatory variable to determine how it changes as a result of changes in the response
variable. Two quantitative variables are displayed graphically using scatterplots. Age, height,
and weight are examples of things that can be measured.

3. As an example, height and gender are categorical variables, while height is
quantitative. Boxplots can be used to compare differences and similarities in the center and
variability of the quantitative variable (e.g. height) across the categories (e.g. males and females).

Crosstabs are usually most useful for showing relationships between categorical variables
because they convert counts into percentages of rows and columns, making any relationships
more readily apparent.

Also, a simple raw count makes it extremely difficult to detect a relationship between two
categorical variables. Because of this, it's useful to express the counts as a percentage of the rows
or percentages of the columns. The rows of the table that result from calculating the counts as a
percentage of the row total would be nearly identical if there were no relationship between the
two variables, otherwise there would be some differences.

If the variables are unrelated, the columns of the table where the counts are expressed as
percentages of column totals will also be practically identical, otherwise the columns will be
different.