Consider a regression or some regression-type model for a certain response variable where the linear predictor includes an ordered factor among the explanatory variables. The inclusion of a factor of this type can take place is a few different ways, discussed in the pertaining literature. The present contribution proposes a different way of tackling this problem, by constructing a numeric variable in an alternative way with respect to the current methodology. The proposed techniques appears to retain the data fitting capability of the existing methodology, but with a simpler interpretation of the model components.

翻译：考虑一个针对某一响应变量的回归或回归类模型，其线性预测因子中包含一个有序因子作为解释变量。这种类型因子的纳入方式有多种，相关文献已对此进行了讨论。本文提出了一种处理该问题的不同方法，即通过一种与现有方法不同的方式构建数值变量。所提出的技术似乎保留了现有方法的数据拟合能力，但模型成分的解释更为简单。