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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lei, Rayleigh, Rodriguez, Abel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19167
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author Lei, Rayleigh
Rodriguez, Abel
author_facet Lei, Rayleigh
Rodriguez, Abel
contents Surveys that rely on ordinal polychotomous (Likert-like) items are widely employed to capture individual preferences because they allow respondents to express both the direction and strength of their preferences. Latent factor models traditionally used in this context implicitly assume that the response functions (the cumulative distribution of the ordinal outcome) are monotonic on the latent trait. This assumption can be too restrictive in several application areas, including in political science and marketing. In this work, we propose a novel ordinal probit unfolding model that can accommodate both monotonic and non-monotonic response functions. The advantages of the model are illustrated by analyzing an immigration attitude survey conducted in the United States.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_19167
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Modeling Ordinal Survey Data with Unfolding Models
Lei, Rayleigh
Rodriguez, Abel
Methodology
Surveys that rely on ordinal polychotomous (Likert-like) items are widely employed to capture individual preferences because they allow respondents to express both the direction and strength of their preferences. Latent factor models traditionally used in this context implicitly assume that the response functions (the cumulative distribution of the ordinal outcome) are monotonic on the latent trait. This assumption can be too restrictive in several application areas, including in political science and marketing. In this work, we propose a novel ordinal probit unfolding model that can accommodate both monotonic and non-monotonic response functions. The advantages of the model are illustrated by analyzing an immigration attitude survey conducted in the United States.
title Modeling Ordinal Survey Data with Unfolding Models
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19167