scholarly journals Performance of Polytomous IRT Models With Rating Scale Data: An Investigation Over Sample Size, Instrument Length, and Missing Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenghai Dai ◽  
Thao Thu Vo ◽  
Olasunkanmi James Kehinde ◽  
Haixia He ◽  
Yu Xue ◽  
...  

The implementation of polytomous item response theory (IRT) models such as the graded response model (GRM) and the generalized partial credit model (GPCM) to inform instrument design and validation has been increasing across social and educational contexts where rating scales are usually used. The performance of such models has not been fully investigated and compared across conditions with common survey-specific characteristics such as short test length, small sample size, and data missingness. The purpose of the current simulation study is to inform the literature and guide the implementation of GRM and GPCM under these conditions. For item parameter estimations, results suggest a sample size of at least 300 and/or an instrument length of at least five items for both models. The performance of GPCM is stable across instrument lengths while that of GRM improves notably as the instrument length increases. For person parameters, GRM reveals more accurate estimates when the proportion of missing data is small, whereas GPCM is favored in the presence of a large amount of missingness. Further, it is not recommended to compare GRM and GPCM based on test information. Relative model fit indices (AIC, BIC, LL) might not be powerful when the sample size is less than 300 and the length is less than 5. Synthesis of the patterns of the results, as well as recommendations for the implementation of polytomous IRT models, are presented and discussed.

Biometrics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 877-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujun Wu ◽  
Marc G. Genton ◽  
Leonard A. Stefanski

Author(s):  
Cristina Cañete-Massé ◽  
Maria Carbó-Carreté ◽  
María Dolores Figueroa-Jiménez ◽  
Guillermo R. Oviedo ◽  
Myriam Guerra-Balic ◽  
...  

AbstractThe presence of missing data and small sample sizes are very common in social and health sciences. Concurrently to present a methodology to solve the small sample size and missing data, we aim to present a definition of Cognitive Reserve for people with Down Syndrome. This population has become an appealing focus to study this concept because of the high incidence of dementia. The accidental sample comprised 35 persons with DS (16–35 years). A total of 12 variables were acquired, four of them had missing data. Two types of multiple imputation were made. Confirmatory factor analysis with Bayesian estimations was performed on the final database with non-informative priors. However, to solve the sample size problem, two additional corrections were made: first, we followed the Jiang and Yuan (2017) schema, and second, we made a Jackknife correlation correction. The estimations of the confirmatory factor analysis, as well as the global fit, are adequate. As an applied perspective, the acceptable fit of our model suggests the possibility of operationalizing the latent factor Cognitive Reserve in a simple way to measure it in the Down Syndrome population.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Gabbiadini ◽  
Eirini Zacharopoulou ◽  
Federica Furfaro ◽  
Vincenzo Craviotto ◽  
Alessandra Zilli ◽  
...  

Background: Intestinal fibrosis and subsequent strictures represent an important burden in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The detection and evaluation of the degree of fibrosis in stricturing Crohn’s disease (CD) is important to address the best therapeutic strategy (medical anti-inflammatory therapy, endoscopic dilation, surgery). Ultrasound elastography (USE) is a non-invasive technique that has been proposed in the field of IBD for evaluating intestinal stiffness as a biomarker of intestinal fibrosis. Objective: The aim of this review is to discuss the ability and current role of ultrasound elastography in the assessment of intestinal fibrosis. Results and Conclusion: Data on USE in IBD are provided by pilot and proof-of-concept studies with small sample size. The first type of USE investigated was strain elastography, while shear wave elastography has been introduced lately. Despite the heterogeneity of the methods of the studies, USE has been proven to be able to assess intestinal fibrosis in patients with stricturing CD. However, before introducing this technique in current practice, further studies with larger sample size and homogeneous parameters, testing reproducibility, and identification of validated cut-off values are needed.


Author(s):  
Jonah T Hansen ◽  
Luca Casagrande ◽  
Michael J Ireland ◽  
Jane Lin

Abstract Statistical studies of exoplanets and the properties of their host stars have been critical to informing models of planet formation. Numerous trends have arisen in particular from the rich Kepler dataset, including that exoplanets are more likely to be found around stars with a high metallicity and the presence of a “gap” in the distribution of planetary radii at 1.9 R⊕. Here we present a new analysis on the Kepler field, using the APOGEE spectroscopic survey to build a metallicity calibration based on Gaia, 2MASS and Strömgren photometry. This calibration, along with masses and radii derived from a Bayesian isochrone fitting algorithm, is used to test a number of these trends with unbiased, photometrically derived parameters, albeit with a smaller sample size in comparison to recent studies. We recover that planets are more frequently found around higher metallicity stars; over the entire sample, planetary frequencies are 0.88 ± 0.12 percent for [Fe/H] < 0 and 1.37 ± 0.16 percent for [Fe/H] ≥ 0 but at two sigma we find that the size of exoplanets influences the strength of this trend. We also recover the planet radius gap, along with a slight positive correlation with stellar mass. We conclude that this method shows promise to derive robust statistics of exoplanets. We also remark that spectrophotometry from Gaia DR3 will have an effective resolution similar to narrow band filters and allow to overcome the small sample size inherent in this study.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinya Hosokawa ◽  
Kyosuke Momota ◽  
Anthony A. Chariton ◽  
Ryoji Naito ◽  
Yoshiyuki Nakamura

AbstractDiversity indices are commonly used to measure changes in marine benthic communities. However, the reliability (and therefore suitability) of these indices for detecting environmental change is often unclear because of small sample size and the inappropriate choice of communities for analysis. This study explored uncertainties in taxonomic density and two indices of community structure in our target region, Japan, and in two local areas within this region, and explored potential solutions. Our analysis of the Japanese regional dataset showed a decrease in family density and a dominance of a few species as sediment conditions become degraded. Local case studies showed that species density is affected by sediment degradation at sites where multiple communities coexist. However, two indices of community structure could become insensitive because of masking by community variability, and small sample size sometimes caused misleading or inaccurate estimates of these indices. We conclude that species density is a sensitive indicator of change in marine benthic communities, and emphasise that indices of community structure should only be used when the community structure of the target community is distinguishable from other coexisting communities and there is sufficient sample size.


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