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Flexible Multidimensional Item Response Theory Models Incorporating Response Styles

Stanley, Leanne M
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494316298549437

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Psychology.
Psychologists routinely use item responses to estimate individuals’ standing on constructs of theoretical and practical interest. However, in addition to the focal constructs, item responses may be meaningfully influenced by response styles, which are characteristic ways in which participants use rating scales. Response styles may or may not be related to the content of an item and may interfere with the accurate measurement of target constructs. This project focuses on comparing multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) from three model families: difference, divide-by-total, and IRTree models. In addition to ordinal-only models from the three families, I consider two very general models from the divide-by-total (Falk & Cai, 2016) and IRTree (Jeon De Boeck, 2016) families that allow researchers to relax the assumption that Likert-type item responses are purely ordinal. Response style models from the difference model family do not currently exist. Several research questions are addressed using a large set of responses (N = 6,714) to a Big Five personality inventory with 10 items per dimension and a 5- point Likert-type response scale: (1) Can response style models from the divide-by-total and IRTree families be fit to a single set of responses? (2) Is there evidence that response styles should be modeled or can they simply be ignored in terms of statistical model fit (AIC and BIC)? (3) How can IRTree models be extended in such a way that they become more conceptually similar to divide-by-total models for trait and response style dimensions? (4) If there is statistical evidence of response styles in the data, is there also evidence that modeling them makes a practical difference in scores on the target (Big Five) dimensions? The results of this work suggest that failing to model individual differences in extreme and (possibly) midpoint response styles may meaningfully bias expected a posteriori (EAP) scores for at least some personality dimensions. On the other hand, there was not much evidence that this bias at the individual level meaningfully impacted group-level parameter estimates (correlations among the Big Five dimensions) within this sample of respondents who completed the Big Five measure voluntarily from their personal computers. A great deal remains to be explored in developing a useful general taxonomy of item response models, such as the partial taxonomy presented in Chapter 2 for Likert- type responses. There is also much to be explored regarding when MIRT models from the divide-by-total and IRTree families may produce convergent vs. divergent results, and the conditions under which it may or may not be possible to specify conceptually similar models. These very flexible model families have many potential applications for investigating the psychological meaning of rating scale data.
Paul De Boeck (Advisor)
Michael Edwards (Committee Co-Chair)
Michael De Kay (Committee Member)
194 p.
Personality Psychology; Quantitative Psychology
multidimensional item response theory; response styles, Metropolis-Hastings Robbins-Monro algorithm; Big Five personality dimensions

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Stanley, L. M. (2017). Flexible Multidimensional Item Response Theory Models Incorporating Response Styles [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494316298549437

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Stanley, Leanne. Flexible Multidimensional Item Response Theory Models Incorporating Response Styles. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494316298549437.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Stanley, Leanne. "Flexible Multidimensional Item Response Theory Models Incorporating Response Styles." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1494316298549437

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1494316298549437
324
© 2017, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Flexible Multidimensional Item Response Theory Models Incorporating Response Styles by Leanne M Stanley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.