FINITE MIXTURE MULTILEVEL MULTIDIMENSIONAL ORDINAL IRT MODELS FOR LARGE SCALE CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

We present a class of finite mixture multilevel multidimensional ordinal IRT models for large scale cross-cultural research. Our model is proposed for confirmatory research settings. Our prior for item parameters is a mixture distribution to accomodate situations where different groups of countries have different measurement operations, while countries within these groups are still allowed to be heterogeneous. A simulation study is conducted that shows that all parameters can be recovered. We also apply the model to real data on the two components of affective subjective well-being: positive affect and negative affect. The psychometric behaviour of these two scales is studied in 28 countries across four continents.