Regression analysis

Ilmari Ivaska
University of Turku
Table of contents

For a long time, a family of statistical methods that fall under the umbrella term of regression analysis has been used routinely as a means to make quantitatively motivated inferences on research data. While systematic comparison between regression analysis and other kinds of statistical techniques goes beyond the scope of this chapter, there are a number of inter-related benefits that support the applicability of regression analysis in the study of pragmatics. First, given that certain general criteria have been considered, it provides reliable and robust results in a reproducible fashion. Second, once familiar with the basic logic underlying regression analysis, the results are relatively easy and straight-forward to interpret. Third, regression analysis is very flexible in the sense that a similar research design with similar logic of reasoning can be applied to a range of research questions and to different types of variables. Fourth, and tying up the aforementioned, regression analyses have become widely used, and so the information provided by studies that make use of such techniques are easily accessible to a wide audience and make the results of different studies easier to compare, ultimately contributing positively to the transparency and the very cumulative nature of the scientific method. (For linguistically oriented discussions on the benefits of various forms of regression analyses, see e.g. Jaeger 2008; Johnson 2009; Tagliamonte and Baayen 2012; Gries 2015; Klavan and Divjak 2016; Plonsky and Oswald 2017.)

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