ideal {pscl} | R Documentation |
Analysis of rollcall
data via the spatial voting model;
analogous to fitting educational testing data via an item-response
model. Model fitting via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC).
ideal(object, codes = object$codes, dropList = list(codes = "notInLegis", lop = 0), d = 1, maxiter = 10000, thin = 100, burnin = 5000, impute = FALSE, meanzero = FALSE, priors = NULL, startvals = NULL, store.item = FALSE, file = NULL, verbose=FALSE)
object |
an object of class rollcall |
codes |
a list describing the types of voting
decisions in the roll call matrix (the votes component of the
rollcall object ); defaults to
object$codes , the codes in the rollcall object. |
dropList |
a list (or alist )
listing voting decisions, legislators and/or votes to be dropped
from the analysis; see dropRollCall for details. |
d |
numeric, (small) positive integer (defaults to 1). |
maxiter |
numeric, positive integer, multiple of thin |
thin |
numeric, positive integer, thinning interval used for recording MCMC iterations. |
burnin |
number of MCMC iterations to run before recording. The
iteration numbered burnin will be recorded. Must be a
multiple of thin . |
impute |
logical , whether to treat missing entries
of the rollcall matrix as missing at random, sampling from the
predictive density of the missing entries at each MCMC iteration. |
meanzero |
logical , whether estimated ideal points
should have a mean of zero and standard deviation one. If TRUE ,
any user-supplied priors will be ignored. This option is helpful
for unidimensional models, and is sufficient to locally identify the
model parameters in this case; more restrictions are required for
identification when d > 1 . See Details. |
priors |
a list of parameters (means and variances)
specifying normal priors for the legislators' ideal points. The
default is NULL , in which case prior values will be generated
for both legislators' ideal points and roll call parameters (for the
ideal points, the default prior parameters are mean zero and
variance one; for the item parameters the defaults are mean zero and
variance 100). If not NULL , priors must be a
list with as many as four named components xp, xpv, bp,
bpv , where
xp n by d matrix
of prior means for the legislators' ideal points;
or alternatively, a scalar, which will be replicated to fill a n
by d matrixxpv n by d matrix of prior
precisions (inverse variances);
or alternatively, a scalar, which will be replicated to fill a n
by d matrix.bp m by d+1 matrix of prior means for the
item parameters (with the item difficulty parameter coming last);
or alternatively, a scalar, which will be replicated to fill a m
by d+1 matrix.bpv m by d+1 matrix of prior
precisions for the item parameters;
or alternatively, a scalar, which will be replicated to fill a m
by d+1 matrix.NA . If any
of the four possible components are not provided, then the
corresponding component of priors is assigned using the default
values described above. |
startvals |
a list containing start values for
legislators' ideal points and item parameters. Default is
NULL , in which case start values will be generated for both
legislators' ideal points and item parameters. See Details. If not
NULL , startvals must be a list containing the
elements xstart and bstart , which should be matrices.
xstart must be of dimensions equal to the number of individuals
(legislators) by d . bstart must be of dimensions
number of items (votes) by d +1. xstart and
bstart cannot contain NA . |
store.item |
logical , whether item discrimination
parameters should be stored. Storing item discrimination parameters
can consume a large amount of memory. |
file |
string, file to write MCMC output. Default is
NULL , in which case MCMC output is stored in memory.
Note that post-estimation commands like plot will not
work unless MCMC output is stored in memory. |
verbose |
logical, default is FALSE , which generates
relatively little output to the R console during execution |
The function fits a d
+1 parameter item-response model to
the roll call data object, so in one dimension the model reduces
to the two-parameter item-response model popular in educational testing.
See References.
Identification: The model parameters are not identified without the user supplying some restrictions on the model parameters (translations, rotations and re-scalings of the ideal points are observationally equivalent, via offsetting transformations of the item parameters). It is the user's responsibility to impose these restrictions; the following brief discussion provides some guidance.
For one-dimensional models, a simple route to identification is the
meanzero
option, which guarantees local identification
(identification up to a 180 rotation of the recovered
dimension). Near-degenerate“spike” priors (priors with
arbitrarily large precisions) or the constrain.legis
option on
any two legislators' ideal points ensures global
identification.
Identification in higher dimensions can be obtained by supplying fixed
values for d+1
legislators' ideal points, provided the supplied
points span a d
-dimensional space (e.g., three supplied ideal
points form a triangle in d=2
dimensions), via the
constrain.legis
option. In this case the function defaults to
vague normal priors, but at each iteration the sampled ideal points
are transformed back into the space of identified parameters, applying
the linear transformation that maps the d+1
fixed ideal points
from their sampled values to their fixed values.
Alternatively, one can impose restrictions on the item parameters via
constrain.items
.
Another route to identification is via post-processing. That
is, the user can run ideal
without any identification
constraints, but then use the function postProcess
to
map the MCMC output from the space of unidentified parameters into the
subspace of identified parameters.
Start values. Start values can be supplied by the user, or
generated by the function itself.
constrain.legis
or
constrain.items
generate start values using the procedures discussed
below, but also impose any (identifying) constraints imposed by the user.
Start values for legislators'
ideal points are generated by double-centering the
roll call matrix (subtracting row means, and column means, adding in
the grand mean), forming a correlation matrix across legislators, and
extracting the first d
eigenvectors, scaled by the square root
of the corresponding eigenvalues. Any constraints from
constrain.legis
are then considered, with the
unconstrained start values (linearly) transformed via least squares
regression, minimizing the sum of the squared differences between the
constrained and the unconstrained start values.
To generate start values for the rollcall/item parameters, a series of
binomial
glms
are estimated
(with a probit link
), one for each
rollcall/item, j = 1, ..., m. The votes on the j-th
rollcall/item are binary responses (presumed to be conditionally
independent given each legislator's latent preference), and the
(constrained or unconstrained) start values for legislators are used
as predictors. The estimated coefficients from these probit models are
stored to serve as start values for the item discrimination and
difficulty parameters. Any constraints on particular item
discrimination parameters from constrain.legis
are then
imposed.
a list
of class ideal
with named components
n |
numeric , integer, number of legislators in the
analysis, after any subseting via processing the dropList . |
m |
numeric , integer, number of rollcalls in roll
call matrix, after any subseting via processing the dropList . |
d |
numeric , integer, number of dimensions
fitted. |
x |
a matrix containing the MCMC samples for
the ideal point of each legislator in each dimension for each
iteration from burnin to maxiter , at an interval of
thin . Rows of the x matrix index iterations; columns
index legislators. |
beta |
a matrix containing the MCMC samples
for the item discrimination parameter for each item in each
dimension, plus an intercept, for each iteration from burnin
to maxiter , at an interval of thin . Rows of the
beta matrix index MCMC iterations; columns index parameters. |
xbar |
a matrix containing the means of the
MCMC samples for the ideal point of each legislator in each dimension,
using iterations burnin to maxiter , at an interval of
thin ; i.e., the column means of x . |
betabar |
a matrix containing the means of
the MCMC samples for the vote-specific parameters, using iterations
burnin to maxiter , at an interval of thin ;
i.e., the column means of beta . |
call |
an object of class call , containing
the arguments passed to ideal as unevaluated expressions. |
Simon Jackman jackman@stanford.edu, with help from Christina Maimone and Alex Tahk.
Albert, James. 1992. Bayesian Estimation of normal ogive item response curves using Gibbs sampling. Journal of Educational Statistics. 17:251-269.
Clinton, Joshua, Simon Jackman and Douglas Rivers. 2004. The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data. American Political Science Review. 98:335-370.
Patz, Richard J. and Brian W. Junker. 1999. A Straightforward Approach to Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods for Item Response Models. Journal of Education and Behavioral Statistics. 24:146-178.
Rivers, Douglas. 2003. “Identification of Multidimensional Item-Response Models.” Typescript. Department of Political Science, Stanford University.
rollcall
, summary.ideal
,
plot.ideal
, predict.ideal
.
tracex
for graphical display of MCMC iterative
history.
idealToMCMC
converts the MCMC iterates in an
ideal
object to a form that can be used by the coda
library.
constrain.items
and
constrain.legis
for implementing identifying
restrictions.
postProcess
for imposing identifying restrictions
ex post.
MCMCirt1d
and
MCMCirtKd
in the MCMCpack
package provide similar functionality to ideal
.
data(s109) ## ridiculously short run for examples id1 <- ideal(s109, d=1, meanzero=TRUE, store.item=TRUE, maxiter=500, burnin=100, thin=10, verbose=TRUE) summary(id1) ## Not run: ## more realistic long run idLong <- ideal(s109, d=1, priors=list(xpv=1e-12,bpv=1e-12), meanzero=TRUE, store.item=TRUE, maxiter=260e3, burnin=1e4, thin=100) ## End(Not run)