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In this article, a testlet hierarchical diagnostic classification model (TH-DCM) was introduced to take both attribute hierarchies and item bundles into account. The expectation-maximization algorithm with an analytic dimension reduction technique was used for parameter estimation. A simulation study was conducted to assess the parameter recovery of the proposed model under varied conditions, and to compare TH-DCM with testlet higher-order CDM (THO-DCM; Hansen, M. (2013). Hierarchical item response models for cognitive diagnosis (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). UCLA; Zhan, P., Li, X., Wang, W.-C., Bian, Y., & Wang, L. (2015). The multidimensional testlet-effect cognitive diagnostic models. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 47(5), 689. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2015.00689 ). Results showed that (1) ignoring large testlet effects worsened parameter recovery, (2) DCMs assuming equal testlet effects within each testlet performed as well as the testlet model assuming unequal testlet effects under most conditions, (3) misspecifications in joint attribute distribution had an differential impact on parameter recovery, and (4) THO-DCM seems to be a robust alternative to TH-DCM under some hierarchical structures. A set of real data was also analyzed for illustration.
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Bayesian Estimation of Attribute Hierarchy for Cognitive Diagnosis Models
Attribute hierarchy, the underlying prerequisite relationship among attributes, plays an important role in applying cognitive diagnosis models (CDM) for designing efficient cognitive diagnostic assessments. However, there are limited statistical tools to directly estimate attribute hierarchy from response data. In this study, we proposed a Bayesian formulation for attribute hierarchy within CDM framework and developed an efficient Metropolis within Gibbs algorithm to estimate the underlying hierarchy along with the specified CDM parameters. Our proposed estimation method is flexible and can be adapted to a general class of CDMs. We demonstrated our proposed method via a simulation study, and the results from which show that the proposed method can fully recover or estimate at least a subgraph of the underlying structure across various conditions under a specified CDM model. The real data application indicates the potential of learning attribute structure from data using our algorithm and validating the existing attribute hierarchy specified by content experts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2051198
- PAR ID:
- 10422443
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3102
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1076-9986
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 810-841
- Size(s):
- p. 810-841
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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