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：考虑针对某一响应变量的回归或回归型模型，其中线性预测变量包含解释变量中的有序因子。此类因子的纳入可通过几种不同方式实现，相关文献已有讨论。本文提出一种处理该问题的不同方法，即通过构建数值变量的方式，与现有方法论形成对比。所提出的技术似乎在保持现有方法数据拟合能力的同时，提供了更简单的模型组件解释。