An ordinal IRT model for the circular analysis of affect and emotions

An ordinal IRT model for the circular analysis of affect and emotions

Wijbrandt H. van Schuur

Department of Soiology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

h.van.schuur@rug.nl

ABSTRACT

for RC33 (Research Committee on Logic and Methodology in Sociology)

Session G (Methods for the sociological analysis of affect and emotion)

The analysis of affect and emotion is full of circular models (e.g., Plutchik & Hope, 1997). During the last years I have developed a method for analyzing polytomous data as representable along the circumference of a circle. This is an ordinal Item Response Theory model for the circumplex, based on previous ordinal IRT models for the cumulative scale (the Mokken scale, Van Schuur 2011)  and for the unfolding scale (Van Schuur 1993). The model for dichotomous data was presented in Mokken et al. (2000). It gives measurement scale values of items and subjects, and goodness of fit measures for the whole scale, for individual items and individual subjects.
I would like to present an application of this method to the study of affect and emotion.

Mokken, R.J., W.H. van Schuur, & A.J. Leeferink (2000). The circles of our minds. A nonparametric IRT model for the circumplex. In: A. Boomsma, M.A.J. van Duijn, & T.A.B. Snijders (eds.). Essays                on Item Response Theory. New York: Springer Verlag, 338-354.

Plutchik, R. & Hope, R. (eds.). (1997). Circumplex models of personality and emotions. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

Van Schuur, W.H. (1993). Nonparametric Unfolding Models for Multicategory Data. Political Analysis 4, 41-74.

Van Schuur, W.H. (2011). Ordinal Item Response Theory: The Mokken Scale. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, Series Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, Vol. 169.