Item Response Trees: a recommended method for analyzing categorical data in behavioral studies

Andrés López-Sepulcre, Sebastiano De Bona, Janne K. Valkonen, Kate D.L. Umbers and Johanna Mappes

Behavioral Ecology, 2015, vol. 26, issue 5, 1268-1273

Abstract: Behavioral data are notable for presenting challenges to their statistical analysis, often due to the difficulties in measuring behavior on a quantitative scale. Instead, a range of qualitative alternative responses is recorded. These can often be understood as the outcome of a sequence of binary decisions. For example, faced by a predator, an individual may decide to flee or stay. If it stays, it may decide to freeze or display a threat and if it displays a threat, it may choose from several alternative forms of display. Here we argue that instead of being analyzed using traditional nonparametric statistics or a series of separate analyses split by response categories, this kind of data can be more holistically analyzed using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) framework extended to binomial response trees. Originally devised for the social sciences to analyze questionnaires with multiple-choice answers, this approach can easily be applied to behavioral data using existing GLMM software. We illustrate its use with 2 representative examples: 1) repeatability in the measurement of antipredator display escalation and 2) the analysis of predator responses to prey appearance.

Date: 2015
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