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

• Published in: Current 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
• Language: English
• 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

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...