An Investigation of the Alignment Method With Polytomous Indicators Under Conditions of Partial Measurement Invariance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The alignment method (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2014) is an alternative to multiple-group factor analysis for estimating measurement models and testing for measurement invariance across groups. Simulation studies evaluating the performance of the alignment for estimating measurement models across groups show promising results for continuous indicators. This simulation study builds on previous research by investigating the performance of the alignment method’s measurement models estimates with polytomous indicators under conditions of systematically increasing, partial measurement invariance. We also present an evaluation of the testing procedure, which has not been the focus of previous simulation studies. Results indicate that the alignment adequately recovers parameter estimates under small and moderate amounts of noninvariance, with issues only arising in extreme conditions. In addition, the statistical tests of invariance were fairly conservative, and had less power for items with more extreme skew. We include recommendations for using the alignment method based on these results.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.103 | 0.368 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".