A comparison of several approaches for controlling measurement error in small samples.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It is well known that methods that fail to account for measurement error in observed variables, such as regression and path analysis (PA), can result in poor estimates and incorrect inference. On the other hand, methods that fully account for measurement error, such as structural equation modeling with latent variables and multiple indicators, can produce highly variable estimates in small samples. This article advocates a family of intermediate models for small samples (N < 200), referred to as single indicator (SI) models. In these models, each latent variable has a single composite indicator, with its reliability fixed to a plausible value. A simulation study compared three versions of the SI method with PA and with a multiple-indicator structural equation model (SEM) in small samples (N = 30 to 200). Two of the SI models fixed the reliability of each construct to a value chosen a priori (either .7 or .8). The third SI model (referred to as "SIα") estimated the reliability of each construct from the data via coefficient alpha. The results showed that PA and fixed-reliability SI methods that overestimated reliability slightly resulted in the most accurate estimates as well as in the highest power. Fixed-reliability SI methods also maintained good coverage and Type I error rates. The SIα and SEM methods had intermediate performance. In small samples, use of a fixed-reliability SI method is recommended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Simulation or modeling | low |
| gpt | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Methods About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Simulation or modeling | low |
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 | 0.235 | 0.404 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 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, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
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".