For Windows-related and other problems, see www.winsteps.com/problems.htm

 

If you experience any inexplicable difficulties, or you have any suggestions of your own, please contact us using the form at www.winsteps.com. We want to resolve any problems. We take great pains to bring you the most reliable Rasch analysis software. We also try to keep abreast of all the latest developments. Consequently Facets is constantly being revised and improved. If necessary, we will send you an updated version of Facets.

 

Facets is innovative software breaking new ground in statistical theory. A guiding design principle has been that a useful solution now is better than a perfect solution later. Consequently, many of the statistical niceties that are taken for granted with 70-year-old statistical techniques are not yet implemented.

 

In the Hegelian conflict between theory and data, Facets regards intentional measurement-oriented, prescriptive and deliberate theory as pre-eminent over inevitably ambiguous data. Conventional statistics regard deterministic data as dominant over arbitrary and accidental statistical models. Since Rasch theory embodies what we demand of our data in our endeavor to construct meaning, failure of the data to generate satisfactory measures implies gross failure in the data, not in the model. This way of thinking is quite unfamiliar to those accustomed to conventional statistical methodology.