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Item response theory and the measurement of psychiatric constructs: some empirical and conceptual issues and challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

S. P. Reise  and
A. Rodriguez
S. P. Reise*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
A. Rodriguez
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
*
*Address for correspondence: S. P. Reise, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, UCLA, Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Item response theory (IRT) measurement models are now commonly used in educational, psychological, and health-outcomes measurement, but their impact in the evaluation of measures of psychiatric constructs remains limited. Herein we present two, somewhat contradictory, theses. The first is that, when skillfully applied, IRT has much to offer psychiatric measurement in terms of scale development, psychometric analysis, and scoring. The second argument, however, is that psychiatric measurement presents some unique challenges to the application of IRT – challenges that may not be easily addressed by application of conventional IRT models and methods. These challenges include, but are not limited to, the modeling of conceptually narrow constructs and their associated limited item pools, and unipolar constructs where the expected latent trait distribution is highly skewed.

Keywords

Item response theorylog-logistic modelpsychopathology measurementskewed latent trait2-parameter logistic model
Type
Review Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 46 , Issue 10 , July 2016 , pp. 2025 - 2039
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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