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Exact person fit indexes for the rasch model for arbitrary alternatives

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Abstract

A new algorithm for obtaining exact person fit indexes for the Rasch model is introduced which realizes most powerful tests for a very general family of alternative hypotheses, including tests concerning DIF as well as model-deviating item correlations. The method is also used as a goodness-of-fit test for whole data sets where the item parameters are assumed to be known. For tests with 30 items at most, exact values are obtained, for longer tests a Monte Carlo-algorithm is proposed. Simulated examples and an empirical investigation demonstrate test power and applicability to item elimination.

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Correspondence to Ivo Poncny.

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The author wishes to thank Elisabeth Ponocny-Seliger and the reviewers for many helpful comments. All exact goodness-of-fit tests proposed in this article are implemented in the menu-driven program T-Rasch 1.0 by Ponocny and Ponocny-Seliger (1999) which can be obtained from ProGAMMA (WWW: http://www.gamma.rug.nl) and also performs nonparametric tests.

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Poncny, I. Exact person fit indexes for the rasch model for arbitrary alternatives. Psychometrika 65, 29–42 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02294184

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02294184

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