Название: Computational Aspects of Psychometric Methods With R
Автор: Patricia Martinkova, Adela Hladka
Издательство: CRC Press
Год: 2023
Страниц: 348
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 21.8 MB

This book covers the computational aspects of psychometric methods involved in developing measurement instruments and analyzing measurement data in social sciences. It covers the main topics of psychometrics such as validity, reliability, item analysis, item response theory models, and computerized adaptive testing. The computational aspects comprise the statistical theory and models, comparison of estimation methods and algorithms, as well as an implementation with practical data examples in R and also in an interactive ShinyItemAnalysis application.

A number of software packages are available for psychometric analysis, many of which contain commercial software for specific purposes. The IRT models are offered with IRTPRO, flexMIRT, Winsteps, or ConQuest. The factor analytic approach, path analysis, and more generally the structural equations models are available with LISREL, EQS, Amos, Mplus, or gllamm which is implemented in Stata.

In this book, we use R (R Core Team, 2022) which is a freely available statistical environment. There are a number of things that make R a great choice for psychometric analysis: Besides being free, it is also open source software, meaning that the code is available for the user, and it is possible to check what a given function does or how the methods are implemented. It offers up-to-date methods as a number of statisticians and researchers from different fields implement the newly published algorithms and methods in R. There is a huge community around R; thus finding an answer to a question is not a hard task. R also offers excellent graphical instruments.

The basic functionality of the language R is enhanced by numerous packages authored by R contributors. Many R packages have been developed to cover general psychometric concepts as well as specific psychometric topics. For an overview, see the subject specific Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) Task View11. In addition, some of the psychometric models can be implemented by using general packages such as lme4.

Key Features

Statistical models and estimation methods involved in psychometric research
Includes reproducible R code and examples with real datasets
Interactive implementation in ShinyItemAnalysis application

The book is targeted toward a wide range of researchers in the field of educational, psychological, and health-related measurements. It is also intended for those developing measurement instruments and for those collecting and analyzing data from behavioral measurements, who are searching for a deeper understanding of underlying models and further development of their analytical skills.