Recommendations

While we discussed a best-practice approach and process to linkage analysis in chapter 7, the intent of this section was to discuss the “science” of linkage analysis in nontechnical terms. We believe that both the science and art are very important for achieving successful outcomes from linkage analyses. However, because numerous textbooks describe the statistical tools we discuss here in detail, we kept our discussion at a nontechnical level to allow those of us who are less comfortable with analytical techniques to get a general grasp of the subject. The goal is to facilitate the marriage between the “art” and “science” of linkage analysis that would, in turn, encourage managers to take advantage of the data at their disposal to improve the quality of their decisions by connecting their actions to the ultimate terminal outcomes of interest.