I've been doing some reading (Huberty & Morris, 1989; Bray & Maxwell,
1982) trying to understand how to best understand the results of an
MANOVA. It seems that one is well advised to do a discriminant function
analysis (DFA) after a significant MANOVA to better understand the
nature of the variate that is created in MANOVA. This is rarely done,
but it seems necessary to be able to interpret MANOVA results. If I do
a dfa after my manova what can I do with those results? For example, I
have a situation where my MANOVA consists of 11 DVs. I have a
significant between subjects effect for gender. Then when I look at the
DFA it appears that only 6 of the 11 DVs are really loading on the
variate. What do I do with this information? Does this lead me to
reanalyze the data with only 6 DVs? Or does this information only tell
me how to interpret the variate on which males and females differ? Any
refs advice, much appreciated.

Matthew Pirritano, Ph.D.
National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow
College of Education
Department of Individual, Family & Community Education
MSC05 3040
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Telephone (505)277-7115
FAX (505)277-8361