An item stimulus approach to understanding test item difficulty
Item
-
Title
-
An item stimulus approach to understanding test item difficulty
-
Identifier
-
d_2009_2013:d16864b65782:11152
-
identifier
-
11569
-
Creator
-
Blanshteyn, Victoria,
-
Contributor
-
Charles Scherbaum
-
Date
-
2012
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Cognitive psychology
-
Abstract
-
Understanding what makes test items difficult is an important step in understanding how individuals solve items on a test and in mapping the cognitive processes that are involved. However, there remains a gap in understanding how general stimulus features of items (e.g., length of a test item) impact the difficulty of items for a range of item types. In an effort to reduce this gap, the current study tested the impact of item stimulus features on item difficulty. The proposed difficulty framework utilized the radical and incidental approach of item generation theory (e.g., Irvine, Dann, & Anderson, 1990), which allows items to be decomposed into the factors that are hypothesized to impact difficulty as well as examine the impact of different item stimulus features on difficulty. To test the proposed framework, the current paper incorporated linear latent trait modeling (Fischer, 1973), an IRT-based analytical approach that expresses item difficulty in terms of underlying factors of stimulus complexity rather than individual parameters. Results indicate that certain item stimulus features, including language ambiguity, negative wording, constructed-response items, and colloquial knowledge impact item difficulty. Implications for test development are discussed.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
2009_2013.csv
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Psychology
