CLC Estimator: A Tool for Latent Construct Estimation via Congeneric Approaches in Survey Research

Abstract

This article proposes the Shiny app ‘CLC Estimator’ –Congeneric Latent Construct Estimator– to address the problem of estimating latent unidimensional constructs via congeneric approaches. While congeneric approaches provide more rigorous results than suboptimal parallel-based scoring methods, most statistical packages do not provide easy access to congeneric approaches. To address this issue, the CLC Estimator allows social scientists to use congeneric approaches to estimate latent unidimensional constructs smoothly. The present app provides a novel solution to the challenge of limited access to congeneric estimation methods in survey research.

Keywords:

• Latent construct estimation
• congeneric approaches
• Shiny app
• scale scores
• social sciences

Article information

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles: The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Funding: This work was not supported.

Role of the Funders/Sponsors: None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments: The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the authors’ institutions is not intended and should not be inferred.

Notes

1 The hosted solution provides users with an extra layer of security when using the CLC estimator Shiny app online.

2 “devtools” requires Rtools installed that can be downloaded from: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/