Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Geometric Data Analysis

Abstract

This chapter focuses on multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), which is a factor analysis statistical method used to analyse relations between a large set of categorical variables. Developed by Jean-Paul Benzécri in the early 1970s, MCA is one of the principal methods of geometric data analysis (GDA). Three different statistical methods can be identified as GDA: correspondence analysis (CA), which enables the cross-tabulation of two categorical variables; MCA for the analysis of a matrix of individuals and categorical variables; and principal component analysis (PCA), which uses numerical variables. In GDA, data is represented as a cloud of points to allow statistical interpretations. Although MCA is a relational method, it differs from social network analysis (SNA) as it focuses on the objective relations that characterize actors or groups, rather than the effective relations.