A NEW INDEX OF DIMENSIONALITY - DETECT

A data-driven index of dimensionality for an educational or psychological test - DETECT, short for Dimensionality Evaluation To Enumerate Contributing Traits, is proposed in this paper. It is based on estimated conditional covariances of item pairs, given score on remaining test items. Its purpose is to detect whatever multidimensionality structure exists, especially in the case of approximate simple structure. It does so by assigning items to relatively dimensionally homogeneous clusters via attempted maximization of the DETECT over all possible item cluster partitions. The performance of DETECT is studied through real and simulated data analyses.