Modelling the latent class structure of multiple Likert items : a paired comparison approach

Francis, Brian (2018) Modelling the latent class structure of multiple Likert items : a paired comparison approach. In: Book of Short Papers SIS 2018 : 49th Scientific meeting of the ItalIan Statistical Society Palermo June 2018. Pearson Italia, Milan, pp. 273-280. ISBN 9788891910233

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Abstract

The modelling of the latent class structure of multiple Likert items measured on the same response scale can be challenging. The standard latent class approach is to model the absolute Likert ratings, where the logits of the profile probabilities for each item have an adjacent category formulation (DeSantis et al., 2008). We instead propose modelling the relative orderings, using a mixture model of the relative differences between pairs of Likert items. This produces a paired comparison adjacent category log-linear model (Dittrich et al., 2007; Francis and Dittrich, 2017), with item estimates placed on a (0,1) “worth” scale for each latent class. The two approaches are compared using data on environmental risk from the International Social Survey Programme, and conclusions are presented.