q3_statistic: Yen-style Q3 local-dependence statistic between facet levels
In mfrmr: Estimation and Diagnostics for Many-Facet Measurement Models

q3_statistic

R Documentation

Yen-style Q3 local-dependence statistic between facet levels

Description

Computes a Q3-style index inspired by Yen (1984) – the Pearson correlation of standardized residuals between every pair of levels of a chosen facet – from a diagnose_mfrm() bundle. Under the conditional-independence assumption of the MFRM, |Q3| should be small for every pair; large absolute values flag pairs of facet elements (e.g. two raters or two items) whose residuals co-move more than the main-effects model expects.

Usage

q3_statistic(
  fit,
  diagnostics = NULL,
  facet = "Rater",
  min_pairs = 5L,
  yen_threshold = 0.2,
  marais_threshold = 0.3,
  relative_offset = 0.2
)

Arguments

`fit`	An `mfrm_fit` from `fit_mfrm()`.
`diagnostics`	Optional `diagnose_mfrm()` output. Computed on demand when omitted.
`facet`	Facet whose levels are paired (default `"Rater"`).
`min_pairs`	Minimum number of shared response opportunities required to retain a pair. Pairs below the threshold drop out of the table (mirrors `plot_local_dependence_heatmap()`).
`yen_threshold`	Community-convention flag threshold (default `0.20`). Often attributed to Yen (1984), but the 0.20 cutoff is actually from Chen & Thissen (1997, p. 284); Yen herself did not propose a fixed cutoff. The cutoff was derived for raw-residual Q3 under the 3PL - applying it to standardized-residual Q3 under MFRM is approximate.
`marais_threshold`	Stricter community-convention threshold (default `0.30`). Marais (2013, p. 121) reports this as a value "often considered" in the literature, not as her own recommendation; her actual recommendation is the relative comparison implemented by `relative_offset`.
`relative_offset`	Screening offset for the relative-flag rule `⁠\|Q3 - mean(Q3)\| > relative_offset⁠` (default `0.20`). This is a simplified screening approximation of the relative comparison advocated by Marais (2013) and operationalized by Christensen et al. (2017) as `⁠Q3_* = Q3_max - mean(Q3)⁠`. Christensen et al. (2017) demonstrate empirically that no single critical value is appropriate across designs and recommend a parametric bootstrap; the fixed `0.20` here is a screening default, not a substitute for that bootstrap.

Value

An object of class mfrm_q3 containing:

pairs: A data frame with one row per facet-level pair and columns Level1, Level2, Q3, N, AbsQ3, YenFlag, MaraisFlag, RelativeFlag, and a textual Interpretation summarising which thresholds were exceeded.
summary: One-row tibble with MeanQ3, MaxAbsQ3, and the three flagged-pair counts.
thresholds: The thresholds used, for reproducibility.
facet: The facet whose levels were paired.

Statistic definition (departures from Yen 1984)

This implementation differs from Yen's (1984) original definition in two respects that together affect threshold interpretation.

(1) Standardized vs raw residuals. Yen (1984, eqs. 7-8, p. 127) defines Q3 = cor(d_i, d_j) where ⁠d_{ik} = u_{ik} - P_hat_{ik}⁠ is the raw residual. mfrmr uses standardized residuals Z = (u - P_hat) / sqrt(Var(u)) because that is what diagnose_mfrm() stores. Standardization down-weights high-variance observations and changes the sampling distribution of the resulting correlation; the published critical values (Chen & Thissen, 1997; Christensen et al., 2017) were derived for raw-residual Q3.

(2) Mean-aggregation. When the facet being paired (e.g. Rater) has multiple residual rows per (Person, Level) cell because of additional facets in the design (e.g. multiple Criterion rows per Person-Rater cell), the standardized residuals are first mean-aggregated to one value per (Person, Level) cell, and the Pearson correlation is taken over those mean-aggregated residuals. Yen's original formulation takes the correlation directly over per-(Person, Item) residuals, without aggregation. Mean-aggregation reduces noise but also shrinks the effective sample size and can pull correlations toward the cell mean.

For both reasons, treat the values returned here as a screening summary rather than a direct substitute for the published Q3 thresholds. For a formal local-dependence test under raw-residual Q3, use a parametric bootstrap as recommended by Christensen et al. (2017).

References

Yen, W. M. (1984). Effects of local item dependence on the fit and equating performance of the three-parameter logistic model. Applied Psychological Measurement, 8(2), 125-145. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1177/014662168400800201")}
Chen, W.-H., & Thissen, D. (1997). Local dependence indexes for item pairs using item response theory. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 22(3), 265-289. (Origin of the commonly cited ⁠|Q3| > 0.20⁠ cutoff.)
Marais, I. (2013). Local dependence. In K. B. Christensen, S. Kreiner, & M. Mesbah (Eds.), Rasch models in health (pp. 111-130). London: ISTE / Wiley.
Christensen, K. B., Makransky, G., & Horton, M. (2017). Critical values for Yen's Q3: Identification of local dependence in the Rasch model using residual correlations. Applied Psychological Measurement, 41(3), 178-194. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1177/0146621616677520")}

Examples

toy <- load_mfrmr_data("example_core")
fit <- fit_mfrm(toy, "Person", c("Rater", "Criterion"), "Score",
                method = "JML", maxit = 30)
q3 <- q3_statistic(fit)
q3$summary
# Look for: MaxAbsQ3 < 0.20 (Chen & Thissen 1997 community cutoff) is
#   the comfortable regime; values above 0.30 are commonly considered
#   strict-flag worthy (Marais, 2013, summarising literature). For a
#   formal test, use a parametric bootstrap (Christensen et al., 2017).
#   The summary's flag counts give a quick triage; inspect `q3$pairs`
#   for the offending level pairs and follow up with content review.
head(q3$pairs)

mfrmr documentation built on June 13, 2026, 1:07 a.m.