Item Response Theory: Fundamentals, Applications, and Promise in Psychological Research

Item response theory (IRT) is an increasingly popular approach to the development, evaluation, and administration of psychological measures. We introduce, first, three IRT fundamentals: (a) item response functions, (b) information functions, and (c) invariance. We next illustrate how IRT modeling ca...

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Published inCurrent directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society Vol. 14; no. 2; pp. 95 - 101
Main Authors Reise, Steven P., Ainsworth, Andrew T., Haviland, Mark G.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA Blackwell Publishers 01.04.2005
SAGE Publications
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Adolescents
Depressive disorders
Item response theory
Mathematical functions
Men
Psychological research
Psychological techniques
Psychology
Psychometrics
Research methods
Social psychology
Theory
psychometrics
scaling
classical test theory
item response theory
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Summary:Item response theory (IRT) is an increasingly popular approach to the development, evaluation, and administration of psychological measures. We introduce, first, three IRT fundamentals: (a) item response functions, (b) information functions, and (c) invariance. We next illustrate how IRT modeling can improve the quality of psychological measurement. Available evidence suggests that the differences between IRT and traditional psychometric methods are not trivial; IRT applications can improve the precision and validity of psychological research across a wide range of subjects.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ISSN:0963-7214
1467-8721
DOI:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00342.x