Item Response Theory: An Introduction to Latent Trait Models to Test and Item Development

An application of item response theory to psychological test development

Item response theory (IRT) has become a popular methodological framework for modeling response data from assessments in education and health; however, its use is not widespread among psychologists. This paper aims to provide a didactic application of IRT and to highlight some of these advantages for psychological test development. IRT was applied to two scales (a positive and a negative affect ...

A Practitioner’s Introduction to Equating with Primers on Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory

Randomized Item Response Theory Models

The randomized response (RR) technique is often used to obtain answers on sensitive questions. A new method is developed to measure latent variables using the RR technique because direct questioning leads to biased results. Within the RR technique is the probability of the true response modeled by an item response theory (IRT) model. The RR technique links the observed item response with the tr...

Item response theory and classical test theory: an empirical comparison

Despite theoretical differences between item response theory (IRT) and classical test theory (CTT), there is a lack of empirical knowledge about how, and to what extent, the IRTand CTT-based item and person statistics behave differently. This study empirically examined the behaviors of the item and person statistics derived from these two measurement frameworks. The study focused on two issues:...

Advances in Item Response Theory and Applications : An Introduction

Test theories can be divided roughly into two categories. The first is classical test theory, which dates back to Spearman’s conception of the observed test score as a composite of true and error components, and which was introduced to psychologists at the beginning of this century. Important milestones in its long and venerable tradition are Gulliksen’s Theory of Mental Tests (1950) and Lord a...