Author:

Keywords:

item response theory, local item dependency, structural analysis, guilt, latent trait unidimensionality, emotion-antecedent appraisal, neo personality-inventory, maximum-likelihood, local dependence, em algorithm, model, information, Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods, Psychology, Mathematical, Mathematical Methods In Social Sciences, Psychology, EMOTION-ANTECEDENT APPRAISAL, MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD, LOCAL DEPENDENCE, ITEM, MODEL, GUILT, INFORMATION, PARAMETERS, 1303 Specialist Studies in Education, 1701 Psychology, Social Sciences Methods, 4905 Statistics, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

A framework is presented for modeling the relational structure of concepts using item response theory (IRT) models with interactions between the items, so-called models with local item dependency (LID). The proposed approach works for unidimensional and multidimensional concepts. For the relational structure of a concept to be analyzed, two types of items are used: items that directly refer to the concept and items that refer to the underlying components. The dependencies (the LIDs) are included in the model to analyze the mutual relations between the components and between the components and the concept. In a study on guilt, it was found that a unidimensional model complemented with situation-specific dependencies could explain the data that were gathered. Because of its flexibility, the approach is a promising tool for a structural analysis of concepts.