• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

information for practice

news, new scholarship & more from around the world


advanced search
  • gary.holden@nyu.edu
  • @ Info4Practice
  • Archive
  • About
  • Help
  • Browse Key Journals
  • RSS Feeds

Out of Shape: The Implications of (Extremely) Nonnormal Dependent Variables

Organizational Research Methods, Ahead of Print.
Organizational researchers have increasingly noted the problems associated with nonnormal dependent variable distributions. Most of this scholarship focuses on variables with positive values and long tails, such as employee performance, capital expenses, and assets. However, scholars frequently test organizational theories using dependent variables that include negative values, which is perhaps most prominently the case as it relates to measures of firm performance. Over the course of two studies, we investigate the implications of such nonnormally distributed dependent variables in organizational research. In Study 1, we examine the nonnormality of firm performance measures and uncover extreme levels of skewness and kurtosis that vary substantially across measures, samples, and years. We also illustrate that many transformations scholars use to address nonnormality are ineffective. In Study 2, we create simulations that seek to mirror these distributions, and we find that such extreme nonnormality reduces efficiency and increases Type II errors with most statistical approaches. Our analyses also reveal the effectiveness of quantile regression when modeling dependent variables that exhibit the nonnormal distributions often found in organizational research.

Read the full article ›

Posted in: Journal Article Abstracts on 06/04/2023 | Link to this post on IFP |
Share

Primary Sidebar

Categories

Category RSS Feeds

  • Calls & Consultations
  • Clinical Trials
  • Funding
  • Grey Literature
  • Guidelines Plus
  • History
  • Infographics
  • Journal Article Abstracts
  • Meta-analyses - Systematic Reviews
  • Monographs & Edited Collections
  • News
  • Open Access Journal Articles
  • Podcasts
  • Video

© 1993-2025 Dr. Gary Holden. All rights reserved.

gary.holden@nyu.edu
@Info4Practice