# How should I measure the relationship between a variable containing text and a binomial variable?

I have data in this format:

Words,Source,Result
pestology Gomel, cheap, 0
cocreating, cheap, 1
munitioner impersonating nonextinct, cheap, 1
Kolomna, expensive, 1
Enyo's snakemouth, expensive, 0
blueberries backare farriers, cheap, 0
markets rafales, cheap, 0
...


http://bit.ly/h2ynoG

How should I determine whether the phrases in column one can explain the Result value? What if I want to determine which individual words in the phrase are correlated with successful results?

Also, how should I determine whether the data in which Source is cheap is representative of all of the data?

Thanks.

• What assumptions can you make? E.g. can you assume that only one word in each phrase is responsible for the result, and the remaining words are just distractors? Or are there some "word weights" which get summed up to get the final result? Or something else? Mar 14, 2011 at 23:19
• It is unknown if any of the words are meaningful. How would I determine if the words, either individually or as a phrase, are helpful in predicting the value of Result? Mar 15, 2011 at 0:15