Open AccessDetection of Item Preknowledge Using Response Times
Author(s) -
Sandip Sinharay
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
applied psychological measurement
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.083
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1552-3497
pISSN - 0146-6216
DOI - 10.1177/0146621620909893
Subject(s) - statistic , statistics , type i and type ii errors , item response theory , test statistic , null hypothesis , summary statistics , ancillary statistic , mathematics , econometrics , statistical hypothesis testing , psychometrics
Benefiting from item preknowledge is a major type of fraudulent behavior during educational assessments. This article suggests a new statistic that can be used for detecting the examinees who may have benefited from item preknowledge using their response times. The statistic quantifies the difference in speed between the compromised items and the non-compromised items of the examinees. The distribution of the statistic under the null hypothesis of no preknowledge is proved to be the standard normal distribution. A simulation study is used to evaluate the Type I error rate and power of the suggested statistic. A real data example demonstrates the usefulness of the new statistic that is found to provide information that is not provided by statistics based only on item scores.