The Use of Probabilitstic Data Analysis in Survey Research – Its Roots and Current Achievements

Abstrakt

Starting with the basic ideas of Latent Structure Analysis formulated by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Latent Class Analysis as well as Item Response Theory are introduced.

Special feature of these methods is the assumption that persons with specific abilities or specific dispositions answer several items with a given probability correctly or in a specific category. Furthermore, we are going to focus on the methods prospects in comparison to Classical Test Theory and we will exemplify their use at empirical examples.

Klíčová slova

• Latent Class Analysis
• Item Response Theory