An Introduction to the R Package Agrmt

Abstract

This package provides functions to calculate concentration and dispersion in ordered rating scales. Concentration may also be described as agreement, consensus; dispersion is also known as polarization. It also implements other related measures to classify distributions. At its core, the package provides a generic city-block based concentration measure, and a generic measure of dispersion (disper). To use Van der Eijk’s (2001) algorithmic approach agreement ‘A’, call agreement. The derived polarization lets you calculate a polarization score based on agreement A. Values are inverted and standardized to [0, 1]. Other specific measures implemented: Leik’s measure of ordinal dispersion (Leik), Tatsle and Wierman’s (consensus), Blair and Lacy’s (dsquared, lsquared, and BlairLacy), the measure by Kvalseth (Kvalseth), Berry and Mielke’s IOV (BerryMielke), Reardon (Reardon) and Garcia-Montalvo and Reynal-Querol’s (MRQ) The package includes functions to classify distributions according to Galtung’s (1969) AJUS-system (ajus), and changes over time according to Galtung’s (1969) ISD-system (isd). Moreover, the function modes can identify the position of multiple modes.