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Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2010

Theses/Dissertations

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Item parameter drift

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Education

Item Parameter Drift As An Indication Of Differential Opportunity To Learn: An Exploration Of Item Flagging Methods & Accurate Classification Of Examinees, Tia M. Sukin Sep 2010

Item Parameter Drift As An Indication Of Differential Opportunity To Learn: An Exploration Of Item Flagging Methods & Accurate Classification Of Examinees, Tia M. Sukin

Open Access Dissertations

The presence of outlying anchor items is an issue faced by many testing agencies. The decision to retain or remove an item is a difficult one, especially when the content representation of the anchor set becomes questionable by item removal decisions. Additionally, the reason for the aberrancy is not always clear, and if the performance of the item has changed due to improvements in instruction, then removing the anchor item may not be appropriate and might produce misleading conclusions about the proficiency of the examinees. This study is conducted in two parts consisting of both a simulation and empirical data …


Maintenance Of Vertical Scales Under Conditions Of Item Parameter Drift And Rasch Model-Data Misfit, Timothy Paul O'Neil May 2010

Maintenance Of Vertical Scales Under Conditions Of Item Parameter Drift And Rasch Model-Data Misfit, Timothy Paul O'Neil

Open Access Dissertations

With scant research to draw upon with respect to the maintenance of vertical scales over time, decisions around the creation and performance of vertical scales over time necessarily suffers due to the lack of information. Undetected item parameter drift (IPD) presents one of the greatest threats to scale maintenance within an item response theory (IRT) framework. There is also still an outstanding question as to the utility of the Rasch model as an underlying viable framework for establishing and maintaining vertical scales. Even so, this model is currently used for scaling many state assessment systems. Most criticisms of the Rasch …