Robust estimation for ordinal regression

Ordinal regression is used for modelling an ordinal response variable as a function of some explanatory variables. The classical technique for estimating the unknown parameters of this model is Maximum Likelihood (ML). The lack of robustness of this estimator is formally shown by deriving its breakdown point and its influence function. To robustify the procedure, a weighting step is added to the Maximum Likelihood estimator, yielding an estimator with bounded influence function. We also show that the loss in efficiency due to the weighting step remains limited. A diagnostic plot based on the Weighted Maximum Likelihood estimator allows to detect outliers of different types in a single plot. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.