Background data for: Latent-variable modeling of ordinal outcomes in language data analysis

This dataset contains tabular files with information about the usage preferences of speakers of Maltese English with regard to 63 pairs of lexical expressions. These pairs (e.g. truck-lorry or realization-realisation) are known to differ in usage between BrE and AmE (cf. Algeo 2006). The data were elicited with a questionnaire that asks informants to indicate whether they always use one of the two variants, prefer one over the other, have no preference, or do not use either expression (see Krug and Sell 2013 for methodological details). Usage preferences were therefore measured on a symmetric 5-point ordinal scale. Data were collected between 2008 to 2018, as part of a larger research project on lexical and grammatical variation in settings where English is spoken as a native, second, or foreign language. The current dataset, which we use for our methodological study on ordinal data modeling strategies, consists of a subset of 500 speakers that is roughly balanced on year of birth.