R/item_intercor.R

In performance: Assessment of Regression Models Performance

#' @title Mean Inter-Item-Correlation
#' @name item_intercor
#'
#' @description Compute various measures of internal consistencies
#'    for tests or item-scales of questionnaires.
#'
#' @param x A matrix as returned by the `cor()`-function,
#'    or a data frame with items (e.g. from a test or questionnaire).
#' @param method Correlation computation method. May be one of
#'    `"pearson"` (default), `"spearman"` or `"kendall"`.
#'    You may use initial letter only.
#'
#' @return The mean inter-item-correlation value for `x`.
#'
#' @details This function calculates a mean inter-item-correlation, i.e. a
#'   correlation matrix of `x` will be computed (unless `x` is already a matrix
#'   as returned by the `cor()` function) and the mean of the sum of all items'
#'   correlation values is returned. Requires either a data frame or a computed
#'   `cor()` object.
#'
#'   "Ideally, the average inter-item correlation for a set of items should be
#'   between 0.20 and 0.40, suggesting that while the items are reasonably
#'   homogeneous, they do contain sufficiently unique variance so as to not be
#'   isomorphic with each other. When values are lower than 0.20, then the items
#'   may not be representative of the same content domain. If values are higher
#'   than 0.40, the items may be only capturing a small bandwidth of the
#'   construct." _(Piedmont 2014)_
#'
#' @references
#' Piedmont RL. 2014. Inter-item Correlations. In: Michalos AC (eds)
#' Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Dordrecht: Springer,
#' 3303-3304. \doi{10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_1493}
#'
#' @examples
#' data(mtcars)
#' x <- mtcars[, c("cyl", "gear", "carb", "hp")]
#' item_intercor(x)
#' @export
item_intercor <- function(x, method = c("pearson", "spearman", "kendall")) {
  # Check parameter
  method <- match.arg(method)

  # Mean-interitem-corelation
  if (inherits(x, "matrix")) {
    corr <- x
  } else {
    x <- stats::na.omit(x)
    corr <- stats::cor(x, method = method)
  }

  mean(corr[lower.tri(corr)])
}