The Application of Canonical Correlation to Two-Dimensional Contingency Tables

Almost every elementary statistics textbook has some coverage of the chi-square test (e. g., Comrey & Lee, 2007, Kirk, 2007, Howell, 2002). In particular, the chi-square test is presented in the analysis of categorical data. Most of these textbooks will take the reader up to the contingency table that involves the cross tabulation of two categorical variables. With contingency tables, there are two modes of analyses (Kennedy, 1983): (1) Symmetric and (2) Asymmetric. In the symmetrical case, no distinction is made between the two variables as to which is the dependent variable and which is the independent variable. The primary interest is in whether the two variables are related. In the asymmetric case one of the categorical variables is identified as the independent variable and the other categorical variable is the dependent variable. Here the interest is in