While NFHS and CNSM used similar classifications for the source of drinking water and sanitation facilities, the HUNGaMA survey used a different categorisation.
Different categorisation of the groups of bundle completion did not alter the results.
One important reason for this concerns the inadequate use of statistical methods for continuous predictors, such as age or haemoglobin, finally leading to difficulties in comparing multivariable models with different categorisations of the factors (Simon and Altman, 1994).
We also divide the population into high risk and low risk groups by several methods for each instrument, and calculate the prediction of long-term sickness absence using different categorisations of the scales.
We thus applied profile regression with a different meaningful categorisation of the exposure information (the new discretisation is summarised in Additional file 1: Table S1).
Similarly, the three most consistently analysed clauses (excluding the clause with 100% consistency) included a mix of different categorisations and did not follow an identifiable trend.
The impact of using different categorisation methods on identifying risk factors for resistance is unknown.
Because the studies used different physical activity measures in their tests for trend (e.g., energy expended, intensity, frequency, or duration), as well as different categorisation schemes, we did not conduct a formal meta-analysis of trend across studies.
Furthermore, ideally the questioning in the ongoing surveys in the different countries should be standardised and there should be a uniform categorisation of the different cyber offences.
We recognise the potential value in treating reward size in a continuous manner and testing different categorisations.
We have tried some different categorisations such as considering four educational attainment categories or even a continuous variable.
