Discretizing continuous variables in nutrition and obesity research: a practice that needs to be cut short.
Osvaldo F MoreraMosi I Dane'elBrandt A SmithAlisha H RedelfsSarah L RuizKristopher J PreacherLeah D WhighamPublished in: Nutrition & diabetes (2023)
Dichotomizing continuous independent variables resulted in distortions of effect sizes across studies, an inability to assess the quadratic effect of health literacy, and an inability to detect the moderating effect of BMI. We discourage researchers from dichotomizing and discretizing continuous independent variables and instead use multiple regression to examine relationships between continuous independent and dependent variables.