item.sim: Generate simulated data structures for circumplex or simple structure

Description

Rotations of factor analysis and principal components analysis solutions typically try to represent correlation matrices as simple structured. An alternative structure, appealing to some, is a circumplex structure where the variables are uniformly spaced on the perimeter of a circle in a two dimensional space. Generating simple structure and circumplex data is straightforward, and is useful for exploring alternative solutions to affect and personality structure.

Usage

item.sim(nvar = 72, nsub = 500, circum = FALSE, xloading = 0.6, yloading = 0.6, gloading = 0, xbias = 0, ybias = 0, categorical = FALSE, low = -3, high = 3, truncate = FALSE, cutpoint = 0)
circ.sim(nvar = 72, nsub = 500, circum = TRUE, xloading = 0.6, yloading = 0.6, gloading = 0, xbias = 0, ybias = 0, categorical = FALSE, low = -3, high = 3, truncate = FALSE, cutpoint = 0)
item.dichot(nvar = 72, nsub = 500, circum = FALSE, xloading = 0.6, yloading = 0.6, gloading = 0, xbias = 0, ybias = 0, low = 0, high = 0)

Arguments

nvar

Number of variables to simulate

nsub

Number of subjects to simulate

circum

circum=TRUE is circumplex structure, FALSE is simple structure

xloading

the average loading on the first dimension

yloading

Average loading on the second dimension

gloading

Average loading on a general factor (default=0)

xbias

To introduce skew, how far off center is the first dimension

ybias

To introduce skew on the second dimension

categorical

continuous or categorical variables.

low

values less than low are forced to low (or 0 in item.dichot)

high

values greater than high are forced to high (or 1 in item.dichot)

truncate

Change all values less than cutpoint to cutpoint.

cutpoint

What is the cutpoint

Value

A data matrix of (nsub) subjects by (nvar) variables.

Details

This simulation was originally developed to compare the effect of skew on the measurement of affect (see Rafaeli and Revelle, 2005). It has been extended to allow for a general simulation of affect or personality items with either a simple structure or a circumplex structure. Items can be continuous normally distributed, or broken down into n categories (e.g, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2). Items can be distorted by limiting them to these ranges, even though the items have a mean of (e.g., 1).

The addition of item.dichot allows for testing structures with dichotomous items of different difficulty (endorsement) levels. Two factor data with either simple structure or circumplex structure are generated for two sets of items, one giving a score of 1 for all items greater than the low (easy) value, one giving a 1 for all items greater than the high (hard) value. The default values for low and high are 0. That is, all items are assumed to have a 50 percent endorsement rate. To examine the effect of item difficulty, low could be -1, high 1. This will lead to item endorsements of .84 for the easy and .16 for the hard. Within each set of difficulties, the first 1/4 are assigned to the first factor factor, the second to the second factor, the third to the first factor (but with negative loadings) and the fourth to the second factor (but with negative loadings).

References

Variations of a routine used in Rafaeli and Revelle, 2006; Rafaeli, E. & Revelle, W. (2006). A premature consensus: Are happiness and sadness truly opposite affects? Motivation and Emotion.

Acton, G. S. and Revelle, W. (2004) Evaluation of Ten Psychometric Criteria for Circumplex Structure. Methods of Psychological Research Online, Vol. 9, No. 1 http://www.dgps.de/fachgruppen/methoden/mpr-online/issue22/mpr110_10.pdf

Examples

Run this code

round(cor(circ.sim(nvar=8,nsub=200)),2)
plot(factor.pa(circ.sim(16,500),2)$loadings,main="Circumplex Structure") #circumplex structure
#
#
plot(factor.pa(item.sim(16,500),2)$loadings,main="Simple Structure") #simple structure
#
cluster.plot(factor.pa(item.dichot(16,low=0,high=1),2))

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