[R-pkgs] psych version 1.4.1

[William R Revelle]

psych 1.4.1 is now on CRAN and being distributed to the mirrors.


• Substantial improvements in speed through the use of the parallel package and some coding improvements in a number of functions.
 • Added parallel processing (multicores) to polychoric, tetrachoric, mixed.cor, fa, fa.parallel, cor.ci and alpha 
 • With 2 cores this saves 50%, but this is not a linear function of the number of cores: with 4 cores the savings seems to be 67% and with 8 cores 75%. Requires the parallel package
 • Modified ICLUST to increase speed by about 50% (does not require parallel). 
 • Added splitHalf, omega2latex and ICC2latex 
 • Added the ability to find scores automatically in omega. 
 • A minor tweak to r.test to better report the call in the case of a correlated correlation. 
 • A minor tweak to corr.test so that if all the sample sizes are the same, just report one number.
 • Added the Gleser data set for an example of generalizability theory. 
 • Added the ability data set (just the iqitems scored for correct/incorrect)
 • Added the check option in describe (turning it off increases speed drastically, but at the risk of not detecting logical or factor data). 
 • Added the describeData helper to do a quick pass to list the data types in a data.frame. 
 • Added best.items and lookup as two helper functions for finding item contents from a dictionary of item names and contents.

What is psych?

A number of routines for personality, psychometrics and experimental psychology.   Functions are primarily for scale construction using factor analysis, cluster analysis and reliability analysis, although others provide basic descriptive statistics. Item Response Theory is done using  factor analysis of tetrachoric and polychoric correlations. Functions for simulating particular item and test structures are included. Several functions serve as a useful front end for structural equation modeling.  Graphical displays of path diagrams, factor analysis and structural equation models are created using basic graphics. Some of the functions are written to support a book on psychometrics as well as publications in personality research. For more information, see the https://personality-project.org/r/psych/  webpage 



William Revelle		           http://personality-project.org/revelle.html
Professor			           http://personality-project.org
Department of Psychology   http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/psych/
Northwestern University	   http://www.northwestern.edu/
Use R for psychology             http://personality-project.org/r
It is 5 minutes to midnight	   http://www.thebulletin.org