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psych (version 2.4.1)

00.psych: A package for personality, psychometric, and psychological research

Description

Overview of the psych package.

The psych package has been developed at Northwestern University to include functions most useful for personality and psychological research. Some of the functions (e.g., read.file, read.clipboard, describe, pairs.panels, error.bars and error.dots) are useful for basic data entry and descriptive analyses. Use help(package="psych") or objects("package:psych") for a list of all functions. Two vignettes are included as part of the package. The intro vignette tells how to install psych and overview vignette provides examples of using psych in many applications. In addition, there are a growing set of tutorials available on the https://personality-project.org/r/ webpages.

A companion package psychTools includes larger data set examples and four more vignette.

Psychometric applications include routines (fa for maximum likelihood (fm="mle"), minimum residual (fm="minres"), minimum rank (fm=minrank) principal axes (fm="pa") and weighted least squares (fm="wls") factor analysis as well as functions to do Schmid Leiman transformations (schmid) to transform a hierarchical factor structure into a bifactor solution. Principal Components Analysis (pca) is also available. Rotations may be done using factor or components transformations to a target matrix include the standard Promax transformation (Promax), a transformation to a cluster target, or to any simple target matrix (target.rot) as well as the ability to call many of the GPArotation functions (e.g., oblimin, quartimin, varimax, geomin, ...). Functions for determining the number of factors in a data matrix include Very Simple Structure (VSS) and Minimum Average Partial correlation (MAP).

An alternative approach to factor analysis is Item Cluster Analysis (ICLUST). This function is particularly appropriate for exploratory scale construction.

There are a number of functions for finding various reliability coefficients (see Revelle and Condon, 2019). These include the traditional alpha (found for multiple scales and with more useful output by scoreItems, score.multiple.choice), beta (ICLUST) and both of McDonald's omega coefficients (omega, omegaSem and omega.diagram) as well as Guttman's six estimates of internal consistency reliability (guttman) and the six measures of Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) discussed by Shrout and Fleiss are also available.

Multilevel analyses may be done by statsBy and multilevel.reliability.

The scoreItems, and score.multiple.choice functions may be used to form single or multiple scales from sets of dichotomous, multilevel, or multiple choice items by specifying scoring keys. scoreOverlap correct interscale correlations for overlapping items, so that it is possible to examine hierarchical or nested structures.

Scales can be formed that best predict (after cross validation) particular criteria using bestScales using unit weighted or correlation weights. This procedure, also called the BISCUIT algorithm (Best Items Scales that are Cross validated, Unit weighted, Informative, and Transparent) is a simple alternative to more complicated supervised machine learning algorithms.

Additional functions make for more convenient descriptions of item characteristics include 1 and 2 parameter Item Response measures. The tetrachoric, polychoric and irt.fa functions are used to find 2 parameter descriptions of item functioning. scoreIrt, scoreIrt.1pl and scoreIrt.2pl do basic IRT based scoring.

A number of procedures have been developed as part of the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment (SAPA https://www.sapa-project.org/) project. These routines facilitate forming and analyzing composite scales equivalent to using the raw data but doing so by adding within and between cluster/scale item correlations. These functions include extracting clusters from factor loading matrices (factor2cluster), synthetically forming clusters from correlation matrices (cluster.cor), and finding multiple ((lmCor) and partial ((partial.r) correlations from correlation matrices.

If forming empirical scales, or testing out multiple regressions, it is important to cross validate the results. crossValidation will do this on a different data set.

lmCor and mediate meet the desire to do regressions and mediation analysis from either raw data or from correlation matrices. If raw data are provided, these functions can also do moderation analyses.

Functions to generate simulated data with particular structures include sim.circ (for circumplex structures), sim.item (for general structures) and sim.congeneric (for a specific demonstration of congeneric measurement). The functions sim.congeneric and sim.hierarchical can be used to create data sets with particular structural properties. A more general form for all of these is sim.structural for generating general structural models. These are discussed in more detail in the vignette (psych_for_sem).

Functions to apply various standard statistical tests include p.rep and its variants for testing the probability of replication, r.con for the confidence intervals of a correlation, and r.test to test single, paired, or sets of correlations.

In order to study diurnal or circadian variations in mood, it is helpful to use circular statistics. Functions to find the circular mean (circadian.mean), circular (phasic) correlations (circadian.cor) and the correlation between linear variables and circular variables (circadian.linear.cor) supplement a function to find the best fitting phase angle (cosinor) for measures taken with a fixed period (e.g., 24 hours).

A dynamic model of personality and motivation (the Cues-Tendency-Actions model) is include as cta.

A number of useful helper functions allow for data input (read.file), and data manipulation cs and dfOrder,

The most recent development version of the package is always available for download as a source file from the repository at the PMC lab:

install.packages("psych", repos = "https://personality-project.org/r/", type="source").

This will provide the most recent version for PCs and Macs.

Arguments

Author

William Revelle

Details

Two vignettes (intro.pdf and scoring.pdf) are useful introductions to the package. They may be found as vignettes in R or may be downloaded from https://personality-project.org/r/psych/intro.pdf https://personality-project.org/r/psych/overview.pdf and https://personality-project.org/r/psych/psych_for_sem.pdf. In addition, there are a number of "HowTo"s available at https://personality-project.org/r/

The more important functions in the package are for the analysis of multivariate data, with an emphasis upon those functions useful in scale construction of item composites. However, there are a number of very useful functions for basic data manipulation including read.file, read.clipboard, describe, pairs.panels, error.bars and error.dots) which are useful for basic data entry and descriptive analyses.

When given a set of items from a personality inventory, one goal is to combine these into higher level item composites. This leads to several questions:

1) What are the basic properties of the data? describe reports basic summary statistics (mean, sd, median, mad, range, minimum, maximum, skew, kurtosis, standard error) for vectors, columns of matrices, or data.frames. describeBy provides descriptive statistics, organized by one or more grouping variables. statsBy provides even more detail for data structured by groups including within and between correlation matrices, ICCs for group differences, as well as basic descriptive statistics organized by group.

pairs.panels shows scatter plot matrices (SPLOMs) as well as histograms and the Pearson correlation for scales or items. error.bars will plot variable means with associated confidence intervals. errorCircles will plot confidence intervals for both the x and y coordinates. corr.test will find the significance values for a matrix of correlations. error.dots creates a dot chart with confidence intervals.

2) What is the most appropriate number of item composites to form? After finding either standard Pearson correlations, or finding tetrachoric or polychoric correlations, the dimensionality of the correlation matrix may be examined. The number of factors/components problem is a standard question of factor analysis, cluster analysis, or principal components analysis. Unfortunately, there is no agreed upon answer. The Very Simple Structure (VSS) set of procedures has been proposed as on answer to the question of the optimal number of factors. Other procedures (VSS.scree, VSS.parallel, fa.parallel, and MAP) also address this question. nfactors combine several of these approaches into one convenient function. Unfortunately, there is no best answer to the problem.

3) What are the best composites to form? Although this may be answered using principal components (principal, aka pca), principal axis (factor.pa) or minimum residual (factor.minres) factor analysis (all part of the fa function) and to show the results graphically (fa.diagram), it is sometimes more useful to address this question using cluster analytic techniques. Previous versions of ICLUST (e.g., Revelle, 1979) have been shown to be particularly successful at forming maximally consistent and independent item composites. Graphical output from ICLUST.graph uses the Graphviz dot language and allows one to write files suitable for Graphviz. If Rgraphviz is available, these graphs can be done in R.

Graphical organizations of cluster and factor analysis output can be done using cluster.plot which plots items by cluster/factor loadings and assigns items to that dimension with the highest loading.

4) How well does a particular item composite reflect a single construct? This is a question of reliability and general factor saturation. Multiple solutions for this problem result in (Cronbach's) alpha (alpha, scoreItems), (Revelle's) Beta (ICLUST), and (McDonald's) omega (both omega hierarchical and omega total). Additional reliability estimates may be found in the guttman function.

This can also be examined by applying irt.fa Item Response Theory techniques using factor analysis of the tetrachoric or polychoric correlation matrices and converting the results into the standard two parameter parameterization of item difficulty and item discrimination. Information functions for the items suggest where they are most effective.

5) For some applications, data matrices are synthetically combined from sampling different items for different people. So called Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessement (SAPA) techniques allow the formation of large correlation or covariance matrices even though no one person has taken all of the items. To analyze such data sets, it is easy to form item composites based upon the covariance matrix of the items, rather than original data set. These matrices may then be analyzed using a number of functions (e.g., cluster.cor, fa, ICLUST, pca, mat.regress, and factor2cluster.

6) More typically, one has a raw data set to analyze. alpha will report several reliablity estimates as well as item-whole correlations for items forming a single scale, score.items will score data sets on multiple scales, reporting the scale scores, item-scale and scale-scale correlations, as well as coefficient alpha, alpha-1 and G6+. Using a `keys' matrix (created by make.keys or by hand), scales can have overlapping or independent items. score.multiple.choice scores multiple choice items or converts multiple choice items to dichtomous (0/1) format for other functions.

If the scales have overlapping items, then scoreOverlap will give similar statistics, but correcting for the item overlap.

7) The reliability function combines the output from several different ways to estimate reliability including omega and splitHalf.

8) In addition to classical test theory (CTT) based scores of either totals or averages, 1 and 2 parameter IRT based scores may be found with scoreIrt.1pl, scoreIrt.2pl or more generally scoreIrt. Although highly correlated with CTT estimates, these scores take advantage of different item difficulties and are particularly appropriate for the problem of missing data.

9) If the data has a multilevel structure (e.g, items nested within time nested within subjects) the multilevel.reliability aka mlr function will estimate generalizability coefficients for data over subjects, subjects over time, etc. mlPlot will provide plots for each subject of items over time. mlArrange takes the conventional wide output format and converts it to the long format necessary for some multilevel functions. Other functions useful for multilevel data include statsBy and faBy.

An additional set of functions generate simulated data to meet certain structural properties. sim.anova produces data simulating a 3 way analysis of variance (ANOVA) or linear model with or with out repeated measures. sim.item creates simple structure data, sim.circ will produce circumplex structured data, sim.dichot produces circumplex or simple structured data for dichotomous items. These item structures are useful for understanding the effects of skew, differential item endorsement on factor and cluster analytic soutions. sim.structural will produce correlation matrices and data matrices to match general structural models. (See the vignette).

When examining personality items, some people like to discuss them as representing items in a two dimensional space with a circumplex structure. Tests of circumplex fit circ.tests have been developed. When representing items in a circumplex, it is convenient to view them in polar coordinates.

Additional functions for testing the difference between two independent or dependent correlation r.test, to find the phi or Yule coefficients from a two by table, or to find the confidence interval of a correlation coefficient.

Many data sets are included: bfi represents 25 personality items thought to represent five factors of personality, ability has 14 multiple choice iq items. sat.act has data on self reported test scores by age and gender. galton Galton's data set of the heights of parents and their children. peas recreates the original Galton data set of the genetics of sweet peas. heights and cubits provide even more Galton data, vegetables provides the Guilford preference matrix of vegetables. cities provides airline miles between 11 US cities (demo data for multidimensional scaling).

Partial Index (to see the entire index, see the link at the bottom of every help page)

psych A package for personality, psychometric, and psychological research.

Useful data entry and descriptive statistics

read.filesearch for, find, and read from file
read.clipboardshortcut for reading from the clipboard
read.clipboard.csvshortcut for reading comma delimited files from clipboard
read.clipboard.lowershortcut for reading lower triangular matrices from the clipboard
read.clipboard.uppershortcut for reading upper triangular matrices from the clipboard
describeBasic descriptive statistics useful for psychometrics
describe.byFind summary statistics by groups
statsByFind summary statistics by a grouping variable, including within and between correlation matrices.
mlArrangeChange multilevel data from wide to long format
headtailcombines the head and tail functions for showing data sets
pairs.panelsSPLOM and correlations for a data matrix
corr.testCorrelations, sample sizes, and p values for a data matrix
cor.plotgraphically show the size of correlations in a correlation matrix
multi.histHistograms and densities of multiple variables arranged in matrix form
skewCalculate skew for a vector, each column of a matrix, or data.frame
kurtosiCalculate kurtosis for a vector, each column of a matrix or dataframe
geometric.meanFind the geometric mean of a vector or columns of a data.frame
harmonic.meanFind the harmonic mean of a vector or columns of a data.frame
error.barsPlot means and error bars
error.bars.byPlot means and error bars for separate groups
error.crossesTwo way error bars
interp.medianFind the interpolated median, quartiles, or general quantiles.
rescaleRescale data to specified mean and standard deviation
table2dfConvert a two dimensional table of counts to a matrix or data frame

Data reduction through cluster and factor analysis

faCombined function for principal axis, minimum residual, weighted least squares,
and maximum likelihood factor analysis
factor.paDo a principal Axis factor analysis (deprecated)
factor.minresDo a minimum residual factor analysis (deprecated)
factor.wlsDo a weighted least squares factor analysis (deprecated)
fa.graphShow the results of a factor analysis or principal components analysis graphically
fa.diagramShow the results of a factor analysis without using Rgraphviz
fa.sortSort a factor or principal components output
fa.extensionApply the Dwyer extension for factor loadingss
principalDo an eigen value decomposition to find the principal components of a matrix
fa.parallelScree test and Parallel analysis
fa.parallel.polyScree test and Parallel analysis for polychoric matrices
factor.scoresEstimate factor scores given a data matrix and factor loadings
guttman8 different measures of reliability (6 from Guttman (1945)
irt.faApply factor analysis to dichotomous items to get IRT parameters
iclustApply the ICLUST algorithm
ICLUST.diagramThe base R graphics output function called by iclust
ICLUST.graphGraph the output from ICLUST using the dot language
ICLUST.rgraphGraph the output from ICLUST using rgraphviz
kaiserApply kaiser normalization before rotating
reliabilityA wrapper function to find alpha, omega, split half. etc.
polychoricFind the polychoric correlations for items and find item thresholds
poly.matFind the polychoric correlations for items (uses J. Fox's hetcor)
omegaCalculate the omega estimate of factor saturation (requires the GPArotation package)
omega.graphDraw a hierarchical or Schmid Leiman orthogonalized solution (uses Rgraphviz)
partial.rPartial variables from a correlation matrix
predictPredict factor/component scores for new data
schmidApply the Schmid Leiman transformation to a correlation matrix
scoreItemsCombine items into multiple scales and find alpha
score.multiple.choiceCombine items into multiple scales and find alpha and basic scale statistics
scoreOverlapFind item and scale statistics (similar to score.items) but correct for item overlap
lmCorFind Cohen's set correlation between two sets of variables (see also lmCor for the latest version)
smcFind the Squared Multiple Correlation (used for initial communality estimates)
tetrachoricFind tetrachoric correlations and item thresholds
polyserialFind polyserial and biserial correlations for item validity studies
mixed.corForm a correlation matrix from continuous, polytomous, and dichotomous items
VSSApply the Very Simple Structure criterion to determine the appropriate number of factors.
VSS.parallelDo a parallel analysis to determine the number of factors for a random matrix
VSS.plotPlot VSS output
VSS.screeShow the scree plot of the factor/principal components
MAPApply the Velicer Minimum Absolute Partial criterion for number of factors

Functions for reliability analysis (some are listed above as well).

alphaFind coefficient alpha and Guttman Lambda 6 for a scale (see also score.items)
guttman8 different measures of reliability (6 from Guttman (1945)
omegaCalculate the omega estimates of reliability (requires the GPArotation package)
omegaSemCalculate the omega estimates of reliability using a Confirmatory model (requires the sem package)
ICCIntraclass correlation coefficients
score.itemsCombine items into multiple scales and find alpha
glb.algebraicThe greates lower bound found by an algebraic solution (requires Rcsdp). Written by Andreas Moeltner

Procedures particularly useful for Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment

alphaFind coefficient alpha and Guttman Lambda 6 for a scale (see also score.items)
bestScalesA bootstrap aggregation function for choosing most predictive unit weighted items
make.keysCreate the keys file for score.items or cluster.cor
correct.corCorrect a correlation matrix for unreliability
count.pairwiseCount the number of complete cases when doing pair wise correlations
cluster.corfind correlations of composite variables from larger matrix
cluster.loadingsfind correlations of items with composite variables from a larger matrix
eigen.loadingsFind the loadings when doing an eigen value decomposition
faDo a minimal residual or principal axis factor analysis and estimate factor scores
fa.extensionExtend a factor analysis to a set of new variables
factor.paDo a Principal Axis factor analysis and estimate factor scores
factor2clusterextract cluster definitions from factor loadings
factor.congruenceFactor congruence coefficient
factor.fitHow well does a factor model fit a correlation matrix
factor.modelReproduce a correlation matrix based upon the factor model
factor.residualsFit = data - model
factor.rotate``hand rotate" factors
guttman8 different measures of reliability
lmCorstandardized multiple regression from raw or correlation matrix input Formerly called lmCor
mat.regressstandardized multiple regression from raw or correlation matrix input
polyserialpolyserial and biserial correlations with massive missing data
tetrachoricFind tetrachoric correlations and item thresholds

Functions for generating simulated data sets

simThe basic simulation functions
sim.anovaGenerate 3 independent variables and 1 or more dependent variables for demonstrating ANOVA
and lm designs
sim.circGenerate a two dimensional circumplex item structure
sim.itemGenerate a two dimensional simple structure with particular item characteristics
sim.congenericGenerate a one factor congeneric reliability structure
sim.minorSimulate nfact major and nvar/2 minor factors
sim.structuralGenerate a multifactorial structural model
sim.irtGenerate data for a 1, 2, 3 or 4 parameter logistic model
sim.VSSGenerate simulated data for the factor model
phi.demoCreate artificial data matrices for teaching purposes
sim.hierarchicalGenerate simulated correlation matrices with hierarchical or any structure
sim.sphericalGenerate three dimensional spherical data (generalization of circumplex to 3 space)

Graphical functions (require Rgraphviz) -- deprecated

structure.graphDraw a sem or regression graph
fa.graphDraw the factor structure from a factor or principal components analysis
omega.graphDraw the factor structure from an omega analysis(either with or without the Schmid Leiman transformation)
ICLUST.graphDraw the tree diagram from ICLUST

Graphical functions that do not require Rgraphviz

diagramA general set of diagram functions.
structure.diagramDraw a sem or regression graph
fa.diagramDraw the factor structure from a factor or principal components analysis
omega.diagramDraw the factor structure from an omega analysis(either with or without the Schmid Leiman transformation)
ICLUST.diagramDraw the tree diagram from ICLUST
plot.psychA call to plot various types of output (e.g. from irt.fa, fa, omega, iclust
cor.plotA heat map display of correlations
scatterHistBivariate scatter plot and histograms
spiderSpider and radar plots (circular displays of correlations)

Circular statistics (for circadian data analysis)

circadian.corFind the correlation with e.g., mood and time of day
circadian.linear.corCorrelate a circular value with a linear value
circadian.meanFind the circular mean of each column of a a data set
cosinorFind the best fitting phase angle for a circular data set

Miscellaneous functions

comorbidityConvert base rate and comorbity to phi, Yule and tetrachoric
df2latexConvert a data.frame or matrix to a LaTeX table
dummy.codeConvert categorical data to dummy codes
fisherzApply the Fisher r to z transform
fisherz2rApply the Fisher z to r transform
ICCIntraclass correlation coefficients
cortest.matTest for equality of two matrices (see also cortest.normal, cortest.jennrich )
cortest.bartlettTest whether a matrix is an identity matrix
paired.rTest for the difference of two paired or two independent correlations
r.conConfidence intervals for correlation coefficients
r.testTest of significance of r, differences between rs.
p.repThe probability of replication given a p, r, t, or F
phiFind the phi coefficient of correlation from a 2 x 2 table
phi.demoDemonstrate the problem of phi coefficients with varying cut points
phi2polyGiven a phi coefficient, what is the polychoric correlation
phi2poly.matrixGiven a phi coefficient, what is the polychoric correlation (works on matrices)
polarConvert 2 dimensional factor loadings to polar coordinates.
scaling.fitsCompares alternative scaling solutions and gives goodness of fits
scrubBasic data cleaning
tetrachorFinds tetrachoric correlations
thurstoneThurstone Case V scaling
trFind the trace of a square matrix
wkappaweighted and unweighted versions of Cohen's kappa
YuleFind the Yule Q coefficient of correlation
Yule.invWhat is the two by two table that produces a Yule Q with set marginals?
Yule2phiWhat is the phi coefficient corresponding to a Yule Q with set marginals?
Yule2tetraConvert one or a matrix of Yule coefficients to tetrachoric coefficients.

Functions that are under development and not recommended for casual use

irt.item.diff.raschIRT estimate of item difficulty with assumption that theta = 0
irt.person.raschItem Response Theory estimates of theta (ability) using a Rasch like model

Data sets included in the psych or psychTools package

bfirepresents 25 personality items thought to represent five factors of personality
Thurstone8 different data sets with a bifactor structure
citiesThe airline distances between 11 cities (used to demonstrate MDS)
epi.bfi13 personality scales
iqitems14 multiple choice iq items
msq75 mood items
sat.actSelf reported ACT and SAT Verbal and Quantitative scores by age and gender
TuckerCorrelation matrix from Tucker
galtonGalton's data set of the heights of parents and their children
heightsGalton's data set of the relationship between height and forearm (cubit) length
cubitsGalton's data table of height and forearm length
peasGalton`s data set of the diameters of 700 parent and offspring sweet peas
vegetablesGuilford`s preference matrix of vegetables (used for thurstone)

A debugging function that may also be used as a demonstration of psych.

test.psychRun a test of the major functions on 5 different data sets. Primarily for development purposes.
Although the output can be used as a demo of the various functions.

References

A general guide to personality theory and research may be found at the personality-project https://personality-project.org/. See also the short guide to R at https://personality-project.org/r/. In addition, see

Revelle, W. (in preparation) An Introduction to Psychometric Theory with applications in R. Springer. at https://personality-project.org/r/book/

Revelle, W. and Condon, D.M. (2019) Reliability from alpha to omega: A tutorial. Psychological Assessment, 31, 12, 1395-1411. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000754. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2y3w9/ Preprint available from PsyArxiv

Examples

Run this code
#See the separate man pages and the complete index.
#to test most of the psych package run the following
#test.psych()   

Run the code above in your browser using DataLab