Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA)

Abstract

As said at the beginning of this section, the Culture Example was devised for illustrative purposes. Owing to the small number of questions, the geometric space that we have constructed is far from a genuine sociological “space of leisure activities”. In spite of its limitations, this space has enabled us to investigate structuring factors as Age and Education (problem of the first kind); and it might also serve for predicting the location of other cultural practices (problem of the second kind). For instance, for museum visiting, we read in Donnat (1998) that the most frequent response modalities are “with children” and “with partner”; these modalities — and the corresponding subclouds of individuals – are naturally located in the geometric space of the Culture Example. In spite of their tentative character, the conclusions also nicely concur with the studies concerning sociability in the French society: see e.g. Héran (1988).