Data - General MANOVA
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Set up your worksheet in the same manner as with balanced MANOVA: one column for each response variable, one column for each factor, and one column for each covariate, so that there is one row of the worksheet for each observation. The factor columns may be numeric, text, or date/time. If you wish to change the order in which text categories are processed from their default alphabetical order, you can define your own order. (See Ordering Text Categories.) You may include up to 50 response variables and up to 31 factors at one time.

Although models can be unbalanced in general MANOVA, they must be "full rank." That is, there must be enough data to estimate all the terms in your model. For example, suppose you have a two-factor crossed model with one empty cell. Then you can fit the model with terms A B, but not A B A*B. Minitab will tell you if your model is not full rank. In most cases, eliminating some of the high order interactions in your model (assuming, of course, they are not important) can solve non-full rank problems.

Nesting does not need to be balanced. If factor B is nested within factor A, there can be unequal levels of B within each level of A. In addition, the subscripts used to identify the B levels can differ within each level of A.

If any response, factor, or covariate column contains missing data, that entire observation (row) is excluded from all computations. If an observation is missing for one response variable, that row is eliminated for all responses.