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Title:	Scaling the Critics: Uncovering the Latent Dimensions of Movie Criticism with an Item Response Approach
Author:	Spirling, Arthur P; Peress, Michael Note: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors.
Citation:	Peress, Michael, and Arthur Spirling. Forthcoming. Scaling the critics: Uncovering the latent dimensions of movie criticism with an item response approach. Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Full Text & Related Files:	Spirling_Uncovering.pdf (783.8Kb; PDF)
Abstract:	We study the critical opinions of expert movie reviewers as an item response problem. Building on earlier ‘unfolding’ models, we develop a framework that models an individual’s decision to approve or disapprove of an item. Using this approach, we are able to recover the locations of movies and ideal points of critics in the same multi-dimensional space. We demonstrate that a three dimensional model captures much of the variation in critical opinions. The first dimension signifies movie ‘quality’ while the other two connote the nature and sub ject matter of the films. We then demonstrate that the dimensions uncovered from our ‘utility threshold model’ are statistically significant predictors of a movie’s success, and are particularly useful in predicting the success of ‘independent’ films.
Published Version:	http://pubs.amstat.org/loi/jasa
Terms of Use:	This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#OAP
Citable link to this page:	http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3356140

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  Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University

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