Inferential Methods for the Tetrachoric Correlation Coefficient

Douglas G. Bonett and Robert M. Price

Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 2005, vol. 30, issue 2, 213-225

Abstract: The tetrachoric correlation describes the linear relation between two continuous variables that have each been measured on a dichotomous scale. The treatment of the point estimate, standard error, interval estimate, and sample size requirement for the tetrachoric correlation is cursory and incomplete in modern psychometric and behavioral statistics texts. A new and simple method of accurately approximating the tetrachoric correlation is introduced. The tetrachoric approximation is then used to derive a simple standard error, confidence interval, and sample size planning formula. The new confidence interval is shown to perform far better than the confidence interval computed by SAS. A method to improve the SAS confidence interval is proposed. All of the new results are computationally simple and are ideally suited for textbook and classroom presentations.

Keywords: interval estimation; odds ratio; point estimation; reliability; sample size requirement; standard error; tetrachoric approximation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/10769986030002213 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jedbes:v:30:y:2005:i:2:p:213-225

DOI: 10.3102/10769986030002213

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().