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The Polyserial Correlation Coefficient

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Ulf Olsson ,
Fritz Drasgow  and
Neil J. Dorans
Ulf Olsson*
Affiliation:
The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Fritz Drasgow*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Neil J. Dorans
Affiliation:
Educational Testing Service
*
Address reprint requests to Ulf Olsson, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Economics and Statistics, S-750 07 Uppsala 7, SWEDEN, or, in North America, to Fritz Drasgow, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E. Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820, U.S.A.
Address reprint requests to Ulf Olsson, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Economics and Statistics, S-750 07 Uppsala 7, SWEDEN, or, in North America, to Fritz Drasgow, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E. Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820, U.S.A.
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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.

Keywords

point polyserial correlationdichotomous variablespolychotomous variableslatent variables
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 337 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

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.

References

References Notes

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