Residualanalysis in the polytomous rasch model

Residuals for check of model fit in the polytomous Rasch model are examined. Comparisons are made between using counts for all response pattern and using item totals for score groups for the construction of the residuals. Comparisons are also, for the residuals based on score group totals, made between using as basis the item totals, or using the estimated item parameters. The developed methods are illustrated by two examples, one from a psychiatric rating scale, one from a Danish Welfare Study.     

Some neglected problems in IRT

The paper addresses three neglected questions from IRT. In section 1, the properties of the “measurement” of ability or trait parameters and item difficulty parameters in the Rasch model are discussed. It is shown that the solution to this problem is rather complex and depends both on general assumptions about properties of the item response functions and on assumptions about the available item universe. Section 2 deals with the measurement of individual change or “modifiability” based on a Rasch test. A conditional likelihood approach is presented that yields (a) an ML estimator of modifiability for given item parameters, (b) allows one to test hypotheses about change by means of a Clopper-Pearson confidence interval for the modifiability parameter, or (c) to estimate modifiability jointly with the item parameters. Uniqueness results for all three methods are also presented. In section 3, the Mantel-Haenszel method for detecting DIF is discussed under a novel perspective: What is the most general framework within which the Mantel-Haenszel method correctly detects DIF of a studied item? The answer is that this is a 2PL model where, however, all discrimination parameters are known and the studied item has the same discrimination in both populations. Since these requirements would hardly be satisfied in practical applications, the case of constant discrimination parameters, that is, the Rasch model, is the only realistic framework. A simple Pearsonx ² test for DIF of one studied item is proposed as an alternative to the Mantel-Haenszel test; moreover, this test is generalized to the case of two items simultaneously studied for DIF.     

An extension of the partial credit model with an application to the measurement of change

The partial credit model is considered under the assumption of a certain linear decomposition of the item × category parameters _ih into basic parameters _j. This model is referred to as the linear partial credit model. A conditional maximum likelihood algorithm for estimation of the j is presented, based on (a) recurrences for the combinatorial functions involved, and (b) using a quasi-Newton approach, the so-called Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) method; (a) guarantees numerically stable results, (b) avoids the direct computation of the Hesse matrix, yet produces a sequence of certain positive definite matricesB _k ,k=1, 2, ..., converging to the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix of the . The practicality of these numerical methods is demonstrated both by means of simulations and of an empirical application to the measurement of treatment effects in patients with psychosomatic disorders.The authors thank one anonymous reviewer for his constructive comments. Moreover, they thankfully acknowledge financial support by the Österreichische Nationalbank (Austrian National Bank) under Grant No. 3720.     

激励理论及其综合模型的新发展

激励是组织行为学的一个重要研究领域。本文概述了传统的激励理论、满意感理论在近年的研究新成果和新动向,并对激励理论的三大综合模型(聚合模型、新范式模型和混合模型)作了分析。最后提出了未来激励研究的四个方向。     

Teamwork makes the dream work: Testing for shared perceptions on psycho-behavioural skills between athletes,coaches and parents

Psycho-behavioural skills play a key role in optimising progression through talent development, and this study investigated to what extent athlete’s self-perceptions align with those of their coaches and parents. Firstly, we examined if levels of alignment between these three raters differ across age of the athlete. To this end, 122 athletes between 9 and 18 years old (12.17 ± 2.41 years old; 47 gymnasts, 13 cyclists and 62 badminton players) completed a psycho-behavioural questionnaire. The ANOVA’s indicated low levels of correspondence between the ratings of the athlete, the coach and the parents during childhood, while better levels of shared perceptions were found in adolescence. Secondly, we investigated to what extent coaches and parents believed their own perception of the athlete’s and the perception of the athlete’s psycho-behavioural skills were accurate. Parents appeared to be more confident in accurately perceiving the psycho-behavioural skills of the athlete than coaches. Parents and coaches also believed that older athletes would be more honest on their psycho-behavioural shortcomings than younger athletes. Altogether, these findings highlight that athletes and other stakeholders in the talent development environment should strive for better alignment in perceptions on psycho-behavioural skills during the talent development pathway. With better integrated perceptions, a more functional and efficient talent development system for the athlete targeting the psycho-behavioural skills can be created.     

Specific and general transfer of perceptual-motor skills and learning between sports: A systematic review

ObjectivesSport developmental models contend that participating in different sports promotes expertise development, implying positive skill transfer between sports. This study conceptualizes and examines how specific and general transfer occur and interact between sports in the short- (skill transfer) and long-term (learning transfer). Specific transfer is predicated on the perception and utilisation of specifying information in a transfer task, while general transfer relies on non-specifying, "general" information. Furthermore, the study examined how certain conditions (affordance similarity, perceptual-motor exploration and expertise) promote the transfer process.DesignSystematic literature review.MethodsAn electronic search was performed on SPORTDiscuss, Pubmed/MEDLINE, and Scopus. Studies were included if participants performed a transfer task in a sport different to the sport they learned a skill in.ResultsA total of 17 studies of low-to-moderate quality were included. Most studies showed specificity of transfer between sports with overlapping affordances and generality of transfer between sports with no overlapping affordances (for a given skill). Only 2 studies examined how perceptual-motor exploration supported specific transfer, and 2 examined transfer for (subsequent) learning with contrasting results. Six studies indicated an expertise effect, showing higher transfer in skilled vs less-skilled athletes.ConclusionsThis review provides a conceptualization of specificity and generality of transfer, and initial evidence on how transfer emerges between sports in the short-term. It provides little information on the general-specific interaction in the short-term, and does not provide any insights on how transfer emerges in mid- and long-term. As such, no inference regarding sport developmental models can be made. The low-to-moderate quality of the studies requires caution in interpreting these findings. We encourage future research to investigate general and specific transfer longitudinally, recruiting populations with different expertise levels to further advance our current understanding.     

Rasch's multiplicative poisson model with covariates

As a multivariate model of the number of events, Rasch's multiplicative Poisson model is extended such that the parameters for individuals in the prior gamma distribution have continuous covariates. The parameters for individuals are integrated out and the hyperparameters in the prior distribution are estimated by a numerical method separately from difficulty parameters that are treated as fixed parameters or random variables. In addition, a method is presented for estimating parameters in Rasch's model with missing values. The author is now affiliated with the Otara University of Commerce. The author is grateful to Yoshio Takane, Haruo Yanai, Eiji Muraki, the editor and referees for their careful readings and helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. Part of this work was presented at the third European Congress of Psychology at Tampere, Finland in 1993.     

韦伯比的拟合公式

本文以神经生理学为基础,结合感官具有调节和比较两功能的实用性,建立起刺激在大脑皮层上引起感知效应Ｅ的数学模型：Ｅ＝Ｂｌｏｇ（１＋ｋＩ）,其中ｋ＝Ｉ￣（－ｂ）／ａ。从此出发,可推出中等以上刺激的差别阈判据：△ＥＭ＝恒量。将此判据推广到弱刺激,即得到差别阈的普适规律：△Ｉ／（Ｉ＋ａＩ￣ｂ）＝Ｎ,亦即韦伯定律的修订公式。从弱到强的广大刺激范围内,它都能与实验数据拟合良好。     

目标设置过程的理性特征分析

本文运用个案研究方法 ,从人类理性的角度分析了企业在不同的生产经营条件下的目标设置方式 ,发现不确定性和目标难度对管理者的目标设置过程有很大的影响。在确定的 ,且任务较容易的情况下 ,目标设置是以一种与理性期望模型相一致的方式进行的 ,而在高度不确定的条件下 ,管理者则倾向于采用渐进适应的模式设置目标。对管理者的经营活动作进一步深入的分析发现 ,在高难度的任务目标情景中 ,决策者更多地从战略的层次 ,而不是从具体的层次上寻求实现目标的途径 ,从而提出了目标难度与实绩的“策略搜索层次”假设