Re: st: factor analysis on tetrachoric correlation

[Mike Lacy <Michael.Lacy@colostate.edu>]

At 02:33 AM 1/25/2004 -0500, you wrote:

> Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 11:02:18 -0500
> From: Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@nd.edu>
> Subject: Re: Re: st: factor analysis on tetrachoric correlation
>
> At 09:59 PM 1/23/2004 +0100, Jean-Benoit Hardouin wrote:
> >OK, I understand your proposition. Instead to use the matrix of the
> >tetrachoric correlations between my items, I used simulated dataset with a
> >correlation structure similar to this matrix.
> >
A canonical reference on this subject happened to be floating in the 
detritus on my desk.  I may actually have found it on J. Uebersax's website.
The article is:   Knol, Dirk L. and Berger, Margin P.F.  1991 "Empirical 
Comparison Between Factor Analysis and Multidimension Item Response 
Models:." Multivarariate Behavioral Research 26: pp. 457-477.

A quote from the abstract: "...for multidimensional data a common factor 
analysis on the matrix of tetrachoric correlations performs at least as 
well as the theoretically appropriate multidimensional item response models."

It would be nice if someone could do a Stata package for polychoric 
correlations, which of course would include the tetrachoric case. The 
tetrac package, by its own admission, is not very accurate. There are some 
implementations out there (SPSS, Pascal, Fortran) that could be translated, 
with authors' permissions, of course.

Regards,


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Mike Lacy
Fort Collins CO USA
(970) 491-6721 office





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