Resumo

FREIBERG HOFFMANN, Agustín; STOVER, Juliana Beatriz; DE LA IGLESIA, Guadalupe  e  FERNANDEZ LIPORACE, Mercedes. POLYCHORIC AND TETRACHORIC CORRELATIONS IN EXPLORATORY AND CONFIRMATORY FACTORIAL STUDIES. Cienc. Psicol. [online]. 2013, vol.7, n.2, pp.151-164. ISSN 1688-4221.

Scientific advances and software development have increased the amount of exploratory and confirmatory studies in psychometric research. Regularly these studies use Pearson´s correlation coefficient, which was originally conceived to be used with continuous variables, and later was extended to categorical items (dichotomous or polytomous). Currently, improved statistical packages allow scientists to carry on robust procedures, designed specifically for categorical variables, among which stand out tetrachoric and polychoric correlations. Since most of psychometric scales consist in dichotomous and polytomous items (mainly Likert formats), the analysis of such correlations becomes methodologically relevant. This paper presents some peculiarities about the use of these statistics, different software packages to facilitate their implementation, as well as the usual problems associated with its employment, and the possible solutions are discussed

Palavras-chave : tetrachoric correlations; polychoric correlations; factor analysis; categorical variables; ordinal items; dichotomous items.

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