mixed model with non-continuous numeric response

( ...,  family="poisson")  is the most used option for count data

Reinhold Kliegl

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Daniel Ezra Johnson
<danielezrajohnson at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

I have survey results where the response is 1, 2, 3, or 4. These can
be thought of as equally-spaced points on a scale, I don't have a
problem with that. (They're actually more like "not at all", "some",
"mostly", "totally"; the subject is judging a stimulus.)

I want to model crossed random effects for Subject and Item. Am I way
off base in modeling this data with a lmer(family="gaussian") model? I
know it's not perfect, but is it really bad? If so, what could I do
instead? (The error certainly wouldn't be binomial, right?)

Thanks,
Daniel