The dominance analysis approach for comparing predictors in multiple regression

Abstract

A general method is presented for comparing the relative importance of predictors in multiple regression. Dominance analysis (D. V. Budescu, 1993), a procedure that is based on an examination of the R2 values for all possible subset models, is refined and extended by introducing several quantitative measures of dominance that differ in the strictness of the dominance definition. These are shown to be intuitive, meaningful, and informative measures that can address a variety of research questions pertaining to predictor importance. The bootstrap is used to assess the stability of dominance results across repeated sampling, and it is shown that these methods provide the researcher with more insights into the pattern of importance in a set of predictors than were previously available.