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A theory of consistency of ordering generalizable to tailored testing

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Abstract

Measures of consistency and completeness of order relations derived from test-type data are proposed. The measures are generalized to apply to incomplete data such as from tailored testing. The measures are based on consideration of the items-plus-persons by items-plus-persons matrix as an adjacency matrix in which a 1 means that the row element, whether item or person, dominated the column element. From this the number of item-item and person-person dominance relations can be derived. Indices of consistency are developed which compare the number of dominance relations in a matrix to the number that would occur if it were perfectly consistent and to the number in a random matrix; relations to other indices are noted.

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The research reported here was supported by the Office of Naval Research, Contract N00014-75-C-0684, NR150-373. The author wishes to thank Dr. Thomas J. Reynolds for a number of helpful discussions of this material.

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Cliff, N. A theory of consistency of ordering generalizable to tailored testing. Psychometrika 42, 375–399 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02293657

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