
ESTIMATING TRUE‐SCORE DISTRIBUTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING (AN EMPIRICAL BAYES ESTIMATION PROBLEM) *
Author(s) -
Lord Frederic M.
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
ets research bulletin series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2333-8504
pISSN - 0424-6144
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1967.tb00535.x
Subject(s) - bayes' theorem , statistics , mathematics , distribution (mathematics) , sample (material) , prior probability , population , estimation , econometrics , empirical distribution function , bayesian probability , medicine , engineering , mathematical analysis , chemistry , environmental health , chromatography , systems engineering
The following problem is considered: Given that the frequency distribution of the errors of measurement is known, determine or estimate the distribution of true scores from the distribution of observed scores for a group of examinees. Typically this problem does not have a unique solution. However, if the true‐score distribution is “smooth”, then any two smooth solutions to the problem will differ little from each other. Methods for finding smooth solutions are developed a) for a population and b) for a sample of examinees. The results of a number of tryouts on actual test data are summarized.