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NAEP Technical DocumentationItems Showing Good Item Fit

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Dichotomous Item With Data for One Assessment Year

Polytomous Item With Data for One Assessment Year

Dichotomous Item With Data for Two Assessment Years

Polytomous Item With Data for Two Assessment Years

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Items with student responses that can be well described by Item Response Theory (IRT) models have empirical and theoretical item response functions (IRFs) that are close to one another. Loosely speaking, the proportions of students at each score level who actually do give good responses to an item should be close to the theoretical proportions that are estimated using the IRT models. Examples of dichotomous and polytomous items with data from one or two assessment years provide guidelines for the recognition of good fit. For these examples the symbols representing the empirical proportions overlay the theoretical probabilities that are represented by the continuous curves.


Last updated 14 July 2008 (DB)

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