Abstract
The polyserial and point polyserial correlations are discussed as generalizations of the biserial and point biserial correlations. The relationship between the polyserial and point polyserial correlation is derived. The maximum likelihood estimator of the polyserial correlation is compared with a two-step estimator and with a computationally convenient ad hoc estimator. All three estimators perform reasonably well in a Monte Carlo simulation. Some practical applications of the polyserial correlation are described.
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References notes
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By coincidence, the first author and the second and third authors learned that they were working independently on closely related problems and, consequently, decided to write a jointly authored paper.
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Olsson, U., Drasgow, F. & Dorans, N.J. The polyserial correlation coefficient. Psychometrika 47, 337–347 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02294164
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Key words
- point polyserial correlation
- dichotomous variables
- polychotomous variables
- latent variables