Analysis of mixed categorical data in 2 x K contingency tables

2 x K contingency tables having both ordinal and nominal categories are often encountered in various types of studies. Such data are referred to as 'mixed' categorical data in this article. To apply a method for ordered categorical data one has to discard the nominal categories, and to apply a method for nominal categories one has to discard the ordering information inherent in the ordered categories. Therefore, investigators often either discard observations in nominal categories or discard the ordering of the categories before analysing such data. Some information will be lost in both approaches. A method for analysing data in 2 x K 'mixed' tables is proposed in this paper which can be considered as an extension of well known methods for nominal and ordered categories. The proposed method utilizes observations in the nominal categories as well as the ordering information. If all the categories were ordered then the proposed method reduces to the trend test, and if all the categories were nominal then the proposed method reduced to Pearson's chi-square test. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.