Issues in Model Building and Parameter Estimation | Case Studies in Psychology

In this post I discuss issues related to Model Testing and Parameter Estimation. I focus on the role of this process in the scientific development of knowledge. I was motivated to write this post in an attempt to integrate the set of modelling issues that I was encountering across a range of psychological research topics including psychological tests, learning curves, social networks, and well-being. The post provides links to additional resources and presents some of my own observations on model testing and parameter estimation. I make the disclaimer that my ideas are still evolving on this topic.

Scale Construction | Item Reversal, Scale Scores, Reliability, and Metadata

This post discusses how to: (a) use exploratory factor analysis output to determine items to retain on a test; (b) run syntax that reverses items and produces scale scores for a test; (c) calculate reliabilities for scales using retained items. Various tips are provided to make the process more efficient and less error-prone. The example uses SPSS, but many of the ideas would generalise to other statistics packages.

Exploratory Factor Analysis and Scale Construction | R, SPSS, and General Resources

In this post I provide links to resources on exploratory factor analysis and scale construction. Links are provided for conducting exploratory factor analysis in R and in SPSS. Links to academic articles on the topic of exploratory factor analysis and scale construction with an emphasis on psychological applications are provided.

Factor Analysis in R

This post shows an example of running a basic factor analysis in R.

Item Parcelling in Confirmatory Factor Analysis

This post discusses item parcelling in the context of Confirmatory Factor Analysis. What is parcelling? How do you parcel? Should you parcel?

Tetrachoric Correlations | Overview and Resources

What do you do if you want to run a factor analysis on a set of binary variables?