APA Dictionary of Psychology

a statistical technique in which the set of possible values for the parameters of a distribution is estimated based on the most probable sample of observations that one might have obtained from that population. The values derived from this procedure are referred to as maximum likelihood parameter estimates or maximum likelihood estimates and can be used to obtain an overall estimate of how well a given model fits the data. Maximum likelihood techniques are used in several statistical methods, such as logistic regression, hierarchical linear modeling, and structural equation modeling. Also called maximum likelihood estimation (MLE).