Continuous v. dummy coding

This is a continuation of a previous thread I started. Thanks to
everyone who helped me!
I have cross sectional data on work injuries that I want to do some
exploration with. I want to look at associations between work
tasks/postures and injury. I am using unconditional LR to look at each

primary risk factor adjusted for background factors (age, gender,etc).
I have two types of questions:

1. Work tasks (0x/day, 1-5x/day, 6-10x/day, 11-15x/day, More than 15x)
-Coded 0,1,2,3,4
2. Postures/activities (Almost never/not at all, About 10% of the day,
About 25% of the day, Half of the day or more)
-Coded 0,1,2,3

We discussed leaving them as linear instead of dummy coding and it
seemed to work well. However, I am probably going to be working with
someone who likes to use n-1 dummy variables in this situation and she
likes to look for linear trends using some sort of SAS function that I
am unaware of.

If I do code them as continuous......1. Is there a reference I can use

to justify my choice? 2. Would I have to change the coding scheme to
reflect the spacing of the categories.


Thanks,
Marc

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Continuous v. dummy coding
    ... incidents per unit of exposure. ... We discussed leaving them as linear instead of dummy coding and it ... someone who likes to use n-1 dummy variables in this situation and she ... likes to look for linear trends using some sort of SAS function that I ...
    (sci.stat.edu)
  • Re: Continuous v. dummy coding
    ... incidents per unit of exposure. ... We discussed leaving them as linear instead of dummy coding and it ... someone who likes to use n-1 dummy variables in this situation and she ... likes to look for linear trends using some sort of SAS function that I ...
    (sci.stat.edu)