Empirical Comparisons of Disparity Measures for Three Dimensional Log-Linear Models

This paper is concerned with the applicability of the chi-square approximation to the six disparity statistics: the Pearson chi-square, the generalized likelihood ratio, the power divergence, the blended weight chi-square, the blended weight Hellinger distance, and the negative exponential disparity statistic. Three dimensional contingency tables of small and moderate sample sizes are generated to be fitted to all possible hierarchical log-linear models: the completely independent model, the conditionally independent model, the partial association models, and the model with one variable independent of the other two. For models with direct solutions of expected cell counts, point estimates and confidence intervals of the 90 and 95 percentage points of six statistics are explored. For model without direct solutions, the empirical significant levels and the empirical powers of six statistics to test the significance of the three factor interaction are computed and compared.