PLCI.mirt: Compute profiled-likelihood (or posterior) confidence...

In mirt: Multidimensional Item Response Theory

Compute profiled-likelihood (or posterior) confidence intervals

Description

Computes profiled-likelihood based confidence intervals. Supports the inclusion of equality constraints. Object returns the confidence intervals and whether the respective interval could be found.

Usage

PLCI.mirt(
  mod,
  parnum = NULL,
  alpha = 0.05,
  search_bound = TRUE,
  step = 0.5,
  lower = TRUE,
  upper = TRUE,
  inf2val = 30,
  NealeMiller = FALSE,
  verbose = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

mod	a converged mirt model
parnum	a numeric vector indicating which parameters to estimate. Use mod2values to determine parameter numbers. If NULL, all possible parameters are used
alpha	two-tailed alpha critical level
search_bound	logical; use a fixed grid of values around the ML estimate to determine more suitable optimization bounds? Using this has much better behaviour than setting fixed upper/lower bound values and searching from more extreme ends
step	magnitude of steps used when search_bound is TRUE. Smaller values create more points to search a suitable bound for (up to the lower bound value visible with mod2values). When upper/lower bounds are detected this value will be adjusted accordingly
lower	logical; search for the lower CI?
upper	logical; search for the upper CI?
inf2val	a numeric used to change parameter bounds which are infinity to a finite number. Decreasing this too much may not allow a suitable bound to be located. Default is 30
NealeMiller	logical; use the Neale and Miller 1997 approximation? Default is FALSE
verbose	logical; include additional information in the console?
...	additional arguments to pass to the estimation functions

Author(s)

Phil Chalmers [e-mail]

References

Chalmers, R., P. (2012). mirt: A Multidimensional Item Response Theory Package for the R Environment. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(6), 1-29. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v048.i06")}

Chalmers, R. P., Pek, J., & Liu, Y. (2017). Profile-likelihood Confidence Intervals in Item Response Theory Models. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 52, 533-550. \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1080/00273171.2017.1329082")}

Neale, M. C. & Miller, M. B. (1997). The use of likelihood-based confidence intervals in genetic models. Behavior Genetics, 27, 113-120.

See Also

boot.mirt

Examples

if(interactive()) mirtCluster() #use all available cores to estimate CI's in parallel
dat <- expand.table(LSAT7)
mod <- mirt(dat, 1)

result <- PLCI.mirt(mod)
result


mod2 <- mirt(Science, 1)
result2 <- PLCI.mirt(mod2)
result2

# only estimate CI's slopes
sv <- mod2values(mod2)
parnum <- sv$parnum[sv$name == 'a1']
result3 <- PLCI.mirt(mod2, parnum)
result3

mirt documentation built on Sept. 10, 2025, 1:07 a.m.