Abstract
This study offers relatively new methodological tools for an accurate and exhaustive analysis of categorical data, such as those from nominal and ordinal scales usually reported by means of contingency tables. The data about change in dieting status for men and women collected by Heatherton et al. (1997) in their longitudinal study of eating behavior , are reanalyzed now through an alternative approach, consisting of several applications derived from Generalized Linear Models. These techniques can result highly useful for a desirable increase in the rate of repeated measures or panel works, whose data have been in most occasions missanalyzed so far because of an abusive rest on the classic statistical methods. A very interesting feature observed throughout this modeling approach is the different patterns of eating behavior by gender; so the same models must not be applied to the analysis of women's and men's responses, on pain of losing crucial information.
