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Invariance of Item Characteristic Functions With Variations in Instructional Coverage
Author(s) -
Miller M. David,
Linn Robert L.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
journal of educational measurement
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.917
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-3984
pISSN - 0022-0655
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1988.tb00303.x
Subject(s) - item response theory , curriculum , test (biology) , psychology , equating , mathematics education , measurement invariance , function (biology) , achievement test , correlation , statistics , mathematics , psychometrics , standardized test , pedagogy , confirmatory factor analysis , structural equation modeling , paleontology , geometry , evolutionary biology , rasch model , biology
An assumption of item response theory is that a person's score is a function of the item response parameters and the person's ability. In this paper, the effect of variations in instructional coverage on item characteristic functions is examined. Using data from the Second International Mathematics Study (1985), curriculum clusters were formed based on teachers’ ratings of their students’ opportunities to learn the items on a test. After forming curriculum clusters, item response curves were compared using signed and unsigned sum of squared differences. Some of the differences in the item response curves between curriculum clusters were found to be large, but better performance was not necessarily related to greater opportunity to learn. The item response curve differences were much larger than differences reported in prior studies based on comparisons of black and white students. Implications of the findings for applications of item response theory to educational achievement test data are discussed