Fits an Extended NOminal Response Model (ENORM) using conditional maximum likelihood (CML) or a Gibbs sampler for Bayesian estimation.

fit_enorm(
  dataSrc,
  predicate = NULL,
  fixed_params = NULL,
  method = c("CML", "Bayes"),
  nDraws = 1000,
  merge_within_persons = FALSE
)

Arguments

dataSrc

a connection to a dexter database, a matrix, or a data.frame with columns: person_id, item_id, item_score

predicate

An optional expression to subset data, if NULL all data is used

fixed_params

Optionally, a prms object from a previous analysis or a data.frame with parameters, see details.

method

If CML, the estimation method will be Conditional Maximum Likelihood; otherwise, a Gibbs sampler will be used to produce a sample from the posterior

nDraws

Number of Gibbs samples when estimation method is Bayes.

merge_within_persons

whether to merge different booklets administered to the same person, enabling linking over persons as well as booklets.

Value

An object of type prms. The prms object can be cast to a data.frame of item parameters using function coef or used directly as input for other Dexter functions.

Details

To support some flexibility in fixing parameters, fixed_params can be a dexter prms object or a data.frame. If a data.frame, it should contain the columns item_id, item_score and a difficulty parameter. Three types of parameters are supported:

delta/beta

thresholds between subsequent item categories

eta

item-category parameters

b

exp(-eta)

Each type corresponds to a different parametrization of the model.

References

Maris, G., Bechger, T.M. and San-Martin, E. (2015) A Gibbs sampler for the (extended) marginal Rasch model. Psychometrika. 80(4), 859-879.

Koops, J. and Bechger, T.M. and Maris, G. (in press); Bayesian inference for multistage and other incomplete designs. In Research for Practical Issues and Solutions in Computerized Multistage Testing. Routledge, London.

See also

functions that accept a prms object as input: ability, plausible_values, plot.prms, and plausible_scores