Premium
Using the Distractor Categories of Multiple‐Choice Items to Improve IRT Linking
Author(s) -
Kim JeeSeon
Publication year - 2006
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.1745-3984.2006.00013.x
Subject(s) - item response theory , value (mathematics) , mathematics , psychology , econometrics , cognitive psychology , polytomous rasch model , statistics , short forms , computer science , psychometrics , clinical psychology
Simulation and real data studies are used to investigate the value of modeling multiple‐choice distractors on item response theory linking. Using the characteristic curve linking procedure for Bock's (1972) nominal response model presented by Kim and Hanson (2002) , all‐category linking (i.e., a linking based on all category characteristic curves of the linking items) is compared against correct‐only (CO) linking (i.e., linking based on the correct category characteristic curves only) using a common‐item nonequivalent groups design. The CO linking is shown to represent an approximation to what occurs when using a traditional correct/incorrect item response model for linking. Results suggest that the number of linking items needed to achieve an equivalent level of linking precision declines substantially when incorporating the distractor categories.