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A COMPARISON OF STANDARD AND ALTERNATIVE MEASUREMENT
MODELS FOR DEALING WITH SKEWED DATA WITH APPLICATIONS TO
LONGITUDINAL DATA ON THE CHILD PSYCHOPATHY SCALE
by
Leslie M. Owen
________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PSYCHOLOGY)
December 2010
Copyright 2010 Leslie M. Owen
Object Description
| Title | A comparison of standard and alternative measurement models for dealing with skewed data with applications to longitudinal data on the child psychopathy scale |
| Author | Owen, Leslie M. |
| Author email | leslieow@usc.edu; lesliemowen@gmail.com |
| Degree | Master of Arts |
| Document type | Thesis |
| Degree program | Psychology |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date submitted | 2010 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2010-11-22 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | McArdle, John J. |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Baker, Laura A. John, Richard |
| Abstract | The current study examined data from the Southern California Twin Study (Baker et al., 2006), a longitudinal study assessing risk factors for antisocial behavior in a community sample of N=1441 individuals who were twins, with specific focus on the Child Psychopathy Scale (CPS; Lynam, 1997). These longitudinal data reflect self-reported psychopathic personality traits assessed when individuals from a twin pair were 9-10 years, 11-14 years and 15-17 years of age. When analyzing severe emotional and behavioral problems in samples such as this one, an inherent problem is the positively skewed distributions of item responses. This type of data therefore becomes difficult to accurately analyze using statistical methods of analysis such as structural equation modeling (SEM), largely because one of the standard assumptions of SEM is the need to have normally distributed residuals. Therefore, alternative models that deal with this type of data distribution may be useful, and some of these were examined in the current study. As a first step, we examined the factor structure of psychopathic personality traits as measured by the CPS using three different methods: (1) ignoring the problem of skewness, (2) using inverse transformations of the data in an attempt to normalize the distributions, and (3) fitting the data using a categorical measurement model, which does not assume any particular distributions of the data. We then simulated data for a one-factor model with M = 9 indicators with both normal and non-normal distributions to assess the effect of fitting skewed data to factor models. Results of the simulations clearly indicated the categorical approach (3) to be the best method for analyzing moderately skewed data. This conclusion was based on the accuracy of factor loadings and the distinction between the correct and incorrect factor structure when the answer is known.; The categorical model was then applied to the CPS data to test for longitudinal factorial invariance of psychopathic personality traits childhood to adolescence and the numerical results were compared to those of the standard models. |
| Keyword | factor analysis; simulation study; factorial invariance; longitudinal data; child psychopathy scale; skewed data; nonnormal distributions |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3553 |
| Rights | Owen, Leslie M. |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Owen-4208 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume40/etd-Owen-4208.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | A COMPARISON OF STANDARD AND ALTERNATIVE MEASUREMENT MODELS FOR DEALING WITH SKEWED DATA WITH APPLICATIONS TO LONGITUDINAL DATA ON THE CHILD PSYCHOPATHY SCALE by Leslie M. Owen ________________________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (PSYCHOLOGY) December 2010 Copyright 2010 Leslie M. Owen |
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