TESTS OF LINEARITY, MULTIVARIATE NORMALITY AND THE ADEQUACY OF LINEAR SCORES

After some discussion of the purposes of testing multivariate normality, the paper concentrates on two different approaches to testing linearity: on repeated regression tests of non-linearity and on exploiting properties of a dichotomized normal distribution. Regression tests of linearity are used to examine the adequacy of linear scoring systems for explanatory variables, initially recorded on an ordinal scale. Examples from recent psychological and medical research are given in which the methods have led to some insight into subject-matter.