It is natural to assume for rating data an ordinal scale consisting of <InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$$k$$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"> <math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <mi>k</mi> </math> </EquationSource> </InlineEquation> categories (in ascending order of satisfaction). At first glance, ratings can be summarized by a location index (as the median), resulting in a synthesis that takes into account the ordinal nature of data. On...</equationsource></equationsource></inlineequation>

Item nonresponse in survey data can pose significant problems for social scientists carrying out statistical modeling using a large number of explanatory variables. A number of imputation methods exist but many only deal with univariate imputation, or relatively simple cases of multivariate...