An evaluation of computerized adaptive testing for general psychological distress: combining GHQ-12 and Affectometer-2 in an item bank for public mental health research.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Recent developments in psychometric modeling and technology allow pooling well-validated items from existing instruments into larger item banks and their deployment through methods of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Use of item response theory-based bifactor methods and integrative data analysis overcomes barriers in cross-instrument comparison. This paper presents the joint calibration of an item bank for researchers keen to investigate population variations in general psychological distress (GPD).

Methods

Multidimensional item response theory was used on existing health survey data from the Scottish Health Education Population Survey (n = 766) to calibrate an item bank consisting of pooled items from the short common mental disorder screen (GHQ-12) and the

SUBMITTER: Stochl J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4875708 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature