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Individual Distributions Under Ordinal Measurement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Robert S. Schulman
Robert S. Schulman*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert S. Schulman, Department of Statistics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061.
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Abstract

For ordinal measurement the concept of an individual propensity distribution is developed. For any given individual the mean of this distribution is his true score, for which estimation procedures are discussed. Two measures of individual dispersion are considered and their distributions derived in the null case. These measures are shown to be counterparts at the individual level of Kendall’s tau and Spearman’s rho. Estimation of the two dispersion measures from sample data is investigated, and the relation of these estimates to the variance of the individual propensity distribution is derived.

Keywords

ordinal testtrue scoreordinal dispersionrank correlation

Information

Type
Article
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 19 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 The Psychometric Society

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