.. _fwflag_multicategory_normalization:
================================
--multicategory_normalization
================================
Switch
======

--multicategory_normalization

Description
===========

Like :doc:`fwflag_lexicon_normalization`, but normalizes each group's category values by the total lexicon-term count across *all* categories combined, rather than per category. Aliased as ``--liwc_normalization``, ``--liwc_norm``.

Argument and Default Value
==========================

No argument. Boolean switch, default: ``False``. Verified: implicitly turns on :doc:`fwflag_lexicon_normalization` too (``if args.multicategory_normalization and not args.lexicon_normalization: args.lexicon_normalization = True``), so it always implies that switch.

Details
=======

Verified: with a real weighted lexicon, every group's ``group_norm`` summed to almost exactly ``2.0`` across all categories combined (vs. ~26–33 for :doc:`fwflag_lexicon_normalization` alone, and ~1.2–1.3 with neither switch) — a much more uniform scale, useful when a message can belong to more than one category (e.g. LIWC) and you want category values to be comparable across groups regardless of how lexicon-heavy their language was overall.

Other Switches
==============

Required Switches:

* :doc:`fwflag_add_lex_table`
* :doc:`fwflag_l`

Example Commands
================

Using the packaged ``dla_tutorial`` dataset (see :doc:`../../tutorials/tut_dla`):

.. code-block:: bash

	dlatkInterface.py -d dla_tutorial -t msgs -c user_id --add_lex_table -l met_a30_2000_cp \
	--weighted_lexicon --multicategory_normalization