Changes in version 2.6.4 (2026-05-04)
o The psychTools package includes functions and data sets to
accompany the psych package which does classic and modern
psychometrics and to analyze personality and experimental
psychological data sets. The psych package has been developed
as a supplement to courses in research methods in psychology,
personality research, and graduate level psychometric theory.
The functions are a supplement to the text (seemingly forever
in progress): An
introduction to psychometric theory with applications in R.
o A number of vignettes describing how to use psych are included
in psychTools.
o Miscellaneous helper functions for reading, writing and merging
data files and are included as well.
o Version 2.6.4 is the current version of the psychTools package.
It is available as a source file for Macs or PCs in the
repository at . The
released version on CRAN is 2.5.7. The second digit reflects
the year (i.e., 2024), the third set the month (i.e., 2.3.12
was released in December of 2023, the last two digits of
development versions reflect either an minor change or the day
of any modifications, e.g. 1.8.3.3 was the third attempt to get
1.8.3 released. 1.7.8 was released in August, 2017.
o To install the development version, use the command:
install.packages("psychTools",
repos="https://personality-project.org/r/", type="source").
Remember to restart R and library(psych) and
library(psychTools) to make the new version active.
o To see the date of the new version, use
packageDate("psychTools"). (I sometimes update the packages on
my server without changing the version number.)
o These data sets are meant to be useful adjuncts to teaching and
research.
o Additional functions are added sporadically.
o This NEWS file reports changes that have been made as the
package has been developed.
o To report bugs, send email to
using bug.report. Remember to include the systemInfo()
information and a Minimal Working Example.
o To make the help vignettes more up to date, I am releasing
version 2.6.4.
o Added a discussion of CFA to the how to factor vignette
o Also added a discussion of the change in factor indeterminancy
function used in fa and omega as well as the addition of a new
function to do all of this (fsi)
o Dropped the functions that use rtf as that is no longer
available on CRAN.
o Finally figured out how to properly format URLs in the
vignettes!
Changes in version 2.5.7.22 (2025-06-22)
Bugs fixed
o Minor correction to factor.rnw and introduction.rnw to match
change in psych sim.item function (6/19/25)
o Needed to change the version number to 2.5.7.22 because of
mismatch between psych and psychTools. sim.item had been
changed in psych_2.5.6 but since CRAN still had 2.5.3, I added
a check to factor and overview vignettes. Thus the confusing
version number.
Changes in version 2.5.3 (2025-03-23)
Additions
o Added the vignette for factor analysis, improved the Omega
vignette
o Added capabilities to vJoin to merge by a grouping variable.
Changes in version 2.4.12
Additions
o Added the hare function to do Hare or Ranked Choice Voting
Changes in version 2.4.6
Additions
o Added rd2html to allow for conversion of Rd files to HTML.
This allows for single files (specify the file) or complete
directories (e.g. the help files) by choosing a directory.
o Various improvements to vignettes to make them clearer and
updated the links
o added 3 functions to convert to rtf format for those who like
WORD. df2rtf, cor2rtf, fa2rtf.
o Modified fa2latex to properly handle long tables and some other
features requested by Alex Weiss.
Bugs fixed
o Various patches to fa2latex to fix problems reported by
Alexander Weiss.
Changes in version 2.3.12 (2023-12-20)
Additions
o Added the salary dataset from Cohen, Cohen, Aiken and West
(2003), chapter 3.
Changes in version 2.3.8
Additions
o Added the key.name parameter to vJoin
o Added function rearrange to allow new ordering of dataframe
columns
o Added function wide2long to convert wide output to long output
Changes in version 2.3.6 (2023-06-17)
Additions
o Added vJoin and combineMatrices to allow for some basic file
manipulation.
o Added recode to allow recoding of variables (requested by
Yaelle Pierre).
o Added selectBy and splitBy to implement trivial but helpful
actions.
o Improved help for globalWarm and updated various vignettes.
Changes in version 2.2.10
Additions
o Added the colom data set
Changes in version 2.2.9 (2022-09-25)
Additions
o Modified fa2latex to handle output from faLookup.
o Added more scoring keys to the Athenstaedt data to allow for
demonstrations of alpha and omega
o Add cross references from Athenstaedt and GERAS (Gruber) data
sets.
o Added a correlation matrix from Ann Zola et al. (2021) showing
the validity of self reports compared to peer ratings.
Changes in version 2.2.5 (2022-05-10)
Additions
o Added the Athenstaedt data set as well as a dictionary and
scoring keys.
Changes in version 2.2.4
Additions
o Improved the GERAS dictionary to make the graphics match
manuscript by Eagly and Revelle (2022)
Changes in version 2.2.3 (2022-03-18)
Additions
o Improved dfOrder to treat matrices as well. This quasi mimics
fa.lookup in that it sorts numeric values by largest in the row
rather than lexicographically.
o Added the long option to fa2latex (requested by Alexander
Weiss)
Changes in version 2.1.12 (2021-12-06)
Additions
o Added the eminence data set from Simonton and del Giudice as a
nice example of misinterpretation of beta weights in the
presence of highly colinear predictors.
o Updated this news file for version 2.1.6 to reflect datasets
added.
Changes in version 2.1.6 (2021-06-18)
Additions
o Added the GERAS dataset from Gruber et al. (2020) to show
Mahalobnis distances in scatterHist.
o Added the Spengeler and Damian data sets from Project Talent
(nice example of mediation)
o Added the USAF data set of anthropometric measurements (to help
understand what a g factor does or does not mean)
o Added the globalWarm data set from Erik Nisbett (to help in
mediation)
o Added the ability to do long tables in df2latex (requested by
Lizz Dworak)
Changes in version 2.1.3 (2021-03-28)
Additions
o Moved four vignettes over from psych to make psych smaller.
o Current vignettes here include overview, omega, factor, and
mediation
o Checked against psych_2.0.12 and psych_2.1.3
o Added B5 and L27 columns to the spi.dictionary.
Bugs Fixed
o Nothing yet
Changes in version 2.0.9
Additions
o Added the BFI 100 items as a data set
Bugs Fixed
o .dat and RData files were not being read in read.file following
a clean up in code.
Changes in version 2.0.8 (2020-08-12)
Additions
o ability.keys to the ability.rda file
o Modified df2latex to allow mixed numeric and character with
rounding of numeric
Bugs Fixed
o None yet
Changes in version 2.0.6 (2020-07-26)
Additions
o Modified df2latex to allow mixed numeric and character with
rounding of numeric
Bugs Fixed
o Fixed dfOrder to handle Null data
o Fixed holzinger.swineford and holzinger.raw for two cases (180
and 231) where K. Widaman had provided incorrect values (thanks
to Keith for finding this).
Changes in version 1.9.10
Additions
o Added the holzinger.raw, holzinger.swineford and
holzinger.dictionary data sets. The data come from Keith
Widaman.
Bugs Fixed
o None yet.
Changes in version 1.9.6
Additions
o Added bfi.keys to the bfi data set
o Added examples to the sai data set to match Revelle and Condon
2019
o Added spengler data set
Bugs Fixed
o Minor correction to the cities help file
Changes in version 1.9.5
Additions
o Data sets and a few helper functions switched over from psych
to psychTools to make psych a smaller package.
o Data sets included are: ability, bfi, epi.bfi,income, iqitems,
msq, msqR, neo, sai, spi, and tai.
o Helper functions include the df2latex set, dfOrder, and the
various file utilities such as read.clipboard.
o Version number increased to 1.9.5.18 as we work through minor
fixes to the submission to meet the newly enforced more
stringent requirements of CRAN
o Changed cat and print in interactive functions (fileCreate) to
message() following request from CRAN
o Following yet another request from CRAN, changed the read.file
function to not automatically load an .rda file, but rather
suggest how to load it.
o Changed the use of %in% to is.element to get around some
problems in the msqR help file
o Changed the examples in read.clipboard to donttest instead of
dontrun because they are interactive
o Changed all dontrun to donttest following request from CRAN.
Bugs Fixed
o None yet