An Exploration of Link Functions Used in Ordinal Regression

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine issues involved with choice of a link function in generalized linear models with ordinal outcomes, including distributional appropriateness, link specificity, and palindromic invariance are discussed and an exemplar analysis provided using the Pew Research Center 25th anniversary of the Web Omnibus Survey data. Simulated data are used to compare the relative palindromic invariance of four distinct indices of determination/discrimination, including a newly proposed index by Smith et al. (2017).