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    This document provides an introduction to item response theory (IRT) as an alternative to traditional test scoring methods. It discusses some of the limitations of traditional scoring, such as assigning the same credit to questions regardless of difficulty level or ability to discriminate between students. IRT aims to address these issues by developing item characteristic curves to estimate both student ability levels and question parameters, such as difficulty and discrimination. This allows for more precise scoring and ability estimates than classical test theory. The document promotes IRT as enabling learning for test developers, more accurate scoring, and applications such as item banking and adaptive testing.

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    The presentation explains basic notion of Item Response Theory without introducing jargons.

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    Item response theory for ‘dummies’

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    This document provides an introduction to item response theory (IRT) as an alternative to traditional test scoring methods. It discusses some of the limitations of traditional scoring, such as assigning the same credit to questions regardless of difficulty level or ability to discriminate between students. IRT aims to address these issues by developing item characteristic curves to estimate both student ability levels and question parameters, such as difficulty and discrimination. This allows for more precise scoring and ability estimates than classical test theory. The document promotes IRT as enabling learning for test developers, more accurate scoring, and applications such as item banking and adaptive testing.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    4K views16 pages

    Item Response Theory For Dummies'

    Uploaded by

    mshahxaviers
    This document provides an introduction to item response theory (IRT) as an alternative to traditional test scoring methods. It discusses some of the limitations of traditional scoring, such as assigning the same credit to questions regardless of difficulty level or ability to discriminate between students. IRT aims to address these issues by developing item characteristic curves to estimate both student ability levels and question parameters, such as difficulty and discrimination. This allows for more precise scoring and ability estimates than classical test theory. The document promotes IRT as enabling learning for test developers, more accurate scoring, and applications such as item banking and adaptive testing.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 16

    ITEM RESPONSE THEORY FOR

    ‘DUMMIES’
    Maulik Shah
    3rd November, 2010
    K-hive Inaugural session
    IN THE WORLD OF 'ASSESSMENT'...
    Objective:
     To assess learning levels of a student in different
    concepts
     To gauge proficiency (ability level) of a student

    Tools:
     A good test comprising of appropriate items
    (questions)
     Diagnostics based on analysis of student's response

    "A product like ASSET has a scope to evolve on both the


    two fronts."
    TRADITIONAL METHOD OF SCORING
     Raw scores
     Percentile rank based on raw scores

    So what??
    SOME REAL TEST STATISTICS…
    Total 13 14 15 30 31
    Scores

    No. of 1565 1635 1542 301 262


    students

    If you got 14 questions correct in the test, just by


    answering 1 question correctly you move ahead of
    about 6.4% of students who took the test.
    A FEW ITEMS FROM ASSET…
    Which is an easier question of the two?
    INSIGHTS!!!
     54% of the class 7 students answered the first
    question correctly
     82.2% of the same set of students answered the 2 nd
    question correctly
    A case: Item 1 Item 4 Total score

    Student X √ X 10

    Student Y X √ 10

    Both gets the same score and the same percentile


    score!
    Any change in the perspective!!!
    A SOLUTION…
    Problem: Assigning the same credit (mark) to each
    item in the test irrespective of their difficulty level
    Solution: Any guess!!!
    Assign different credit (mark) to questions as per their
    difficulty level
    But how???
    …
    TWO ITEMS OF NEARLY SAME
    DIFFICULTY
    INSIGHTS!!!
     60% of the students who scored 20 on the test
    answered the first question correctly
     70% of the same set of students answered the 2nd
    question correctly
    A case: Item 1 Item 2 Total score
    Student X of √ X 1
    ability 1 unit

    Student Y of X √ 1
    ability 2 units

    The item does not discriminate between the two.


    A SOLUTION…
    Problem: Assigning the same credit (mark) to an
    item in the test irrespective of the ability of the
    student who answers it correctly
    Solution: Any guess!!!
    Assign different credit (mark) to a question as per its
    ability to discriminate at different ability levels
     This adds to the dimension of gauging ability of a
    student while estimating discriminating power of an
    item simultaneously.
    A MODEL OF A NEW SCORING
    MECHANISM
    Estimate ability
    level of a
    student

    Estimate item
    parameters
    THANKS TO IRT TO RESCUE US…
     IRT works on the same model described earlier
     For the dichotomous data like in ASSET, one can
    apply one of the 3 different models
    Difficulty Discrimination Guessing

    1 parameter Yes No No
    model

    2 parameter Yes Yes No


    model

    3 parameter Yes Yes Yes


    model
    ITEM CHARACTERISTIC CURVES
    ESTIMATING STUDENT’S ABILITY
    LEVEL
    A hypothetical case

    Items 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    Hypotheti- 0.12 0.23 0.34 0.47 0.59 0.65 0.78
    cal Item
    difficulty

    Response 1 1 1 1 0 0 0
    of Student
    X
    The estimated ability of a student is about 0.47.
    USES OF IRT
     ‘Learning’ for a test developer: The test should
    comprise of items of different difficulties and
    discriminating abilities
     Scoring with greater precision than that based on
    the classical theory (traditional scoring)
     Percentile Ranks based on ability scores

     Item Banking

     Computer based Adaptive Test


    THANKS!
    Interested! Come join the club “IRT Explorers”

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