Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T12:07:02.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Note on Latent Trait Theory and Bowker's Test

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

William Meredith*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Laura Prouty Sands
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
Requests for reprints may be sent to William Meredith, Psychology Department, Tolman Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720.

Abstract

Bowker's test for marginal equality in contingency tables provides a familiar chi-square test to determine whether the marginal distributions are the same across two or more factors or occasions. In this note it is shown how latent trait theory provides a theoretical framework for the development and application of this test.

Type
Notes And Comments
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Psychometric Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The research reported here was supported by a grant to the senior author from the National Institute on Aging (AG03164).

References

Bishop, Y. M., Fienberg, S. E., Holland, P. W. (1975). Discrete multivariate analysis, Cambridge: The Massachusettes Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Bowker, A. H. (1948). A test for symmetry in contingency tables. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 43, 572574.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flaughter, R. L. (1978). The many definitions of test bias. American Psychologist, 33, 671679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hout, M., Duncan, O. D., Sobel, M. E. (1985). Association and heterogeneity: Structural models of similarities and differences, Berkeley: University of California, Survey Research Center.Google Scholar
Lord, R. M., Novick, M. R. (1968). Statistical theories of mental test scores, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
McNemar, Q. (1947). Note on the sampling error of the difference between correlated proportions or percentages. Psychometrika, 12, 153157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Samejima, F. (1969). Estimation of latent ability using a respone pattern of graded scores. Psychometrika Monograph No. 17, 34(4, Pt. 2).Google Scholar