02111nas a2200193   4500008003900000245007100039210006900110300000900179490000700188520153100195653000701726653003201733653001701765653002301782100001501805700001501820700001901835856006301854       2020                          d00aItem Calibration Methods With Multiple Subscale Multistage Testing0 aItem Calibration Methods With Multiple Subscale Multistage Testi  a3-280 v573 aAbstract Many large-scale educational surveys have moved from linear form design to multistage testing (MST) design. One advantage of MST is that it can provide more accurate latent trait (θ) estimates using fewer items than required by linear tests. However, MST generates incomplete response data by design; hence, questions remain as to how to calibrate items using the incomplete data from MST design. Further complication arises when there are multiple correlated subscales per test, and when items from different subscales need to be calibrated according to their respective score reporting metric. The current calibration-per-subscale method produced biased item parameters, and there is no available method for resolving the challenge. Deriving from the missing data principle, we showed when calibrating all items together the Rubin's ignorability assumption is satisfied such that the traditional single-group calibration is sufficient. When calibrating items per subscale, we proposed a simple modification to the current calibration-per-subscale method that helps reinstate the missing-at-random assumption and therefore corrects for the estimation bias that is otherwise existent. Three mainstream calibration methods are discussed in the context of MST, they are the marginal maximum likelihood estimation, the expectation maximization method, and the fixed parameter calibration. An extensive simulation study is conducted and a real data example from NAEP is analyzed to provide convincing empirical evidence.10aEM10amarginal maximum likelihood10amissing data10amultistage testing1 aWang, Chun1 aChen, Ping1 aJiang, Shengyu  uhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jedm.1224101984nas a2200121   4500008003900000245008900039210006900128300001200197490000700209520157400216100001501790856005701805       2014                          d00aImproving Measurement Precision of Hierarchical Latent Traits Using Adaptive Testing0 aImproving Measurement Precision of Hierarchical Latent Traits Us  a452-4770 v393 a<p>
	Many latent traits in social sciences display a hierarchical structure, such as intelligence, cognitive ability, or personality. Usually a second-order factor is linearly related to a group of first-order factors (also called domain abilities in cognitive ability measures), and the first-order factors directly govern the actual item responses. Because only a subtest of items is used to measure each domain, the lack of sufficient reliability becomes the primary impediment for generating and reporting domain abilities. In recent years, several item response theory (IRT) models have been proposed to account for hierarchical factor structures, and these models are also shown to alleviate the low reliability issue by using in-test collateral information to improve measurement precision. This article advocates using adaptive item selection together with a higher order IRT model to further increase the reliability of hierarchical latent trait estimation. Two item selection algorithms are proposed&mdash;the constrained D-optimal method and the sequencing domain method. Both are shown to yield improved measurement precision as compared to the unidimensional item selection (by treating each dimension separately). The improvement is more prominent when the test length is short and when the correlation between dimensions is high (e.g., higher than .64). Moreover, two reliability indices for hierarchical latent traits are discussed and their use for quantifying the reliability of hierarchical traits measured by adaptive testing is demonstrated.</p>
1 aWang, Chun  uhttp://jeb.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/39/6/452