title: Detection of Test Speededness Using Change-Point Analysis.
abstract: Change-point analysis (CPA) is a well-established statistical method to detect abrupt changes, if any, in a sequence of data. In this paper, we propose a procedure based on CPA to detect test speededness. This procedure is not only able to classify examinees into speeded and non-speeded groups, but also identify the point at which an examinee starts to speed. Identification of the change point can be very useful. First, it informs decision makers of the appropriate length of a test. Second, by removing the speeded responses, instead of the entire response sequence of an examinee suspected of speededness, ability estimation can be improved. Simulation studies show that this procedure is efficient in detecting both speeded examinees and the speeding point. Ability estimation is dramatically improved by removing speeded responses identified by our procedure. The procedure is then applied to a real dataset for illustration purpose.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 118 Haggar Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA.
authors: Can
authors: C
authors: Shao
authors: Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, University of Notre Dame, 171 Hurley Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA. jun.li@nd.edu.
authors: Jun
authors: J
authors: Li
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, 118 Haggar Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA. ycheng4@nd.edu.
authors: Ying
authors: Y
authors: Cheng
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D066264:Datasets as Topic; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: change-point analysis; false discovery rate; item response theory; likelihood ratio statistic; test speededness