An Empirical Identification Issue of the Bifactor Item Response Theory Model.

ABSTRACT: Using the bifactor item response theory model to analyze data arising from educational and psychological studies has gained popularity over the years. Unfortunately, using this model in practice comes with challenges. One such challenge is an empirical identification issue that is seldom discussed in the literature, and its impact on the estimates of the bifactor model's parameters has not been demonstrated. This issue occurs when an item's discriminations on the general and specific dimensions are approximately equal (i.e., the within-item discriminations are similar in strength), leading to difficulties in obtaining unique estimates for those discriminations. We conducted three simulation studies to demonstrate that within-item discriminations being similar in strength creates problems i

SUBMITTER: Chen W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9574084 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature