Detection of unmotivated test takers through an analysis of response patterns: Beyond person-fit statistics.

摘要

The identification of patterned responding in unmotivated test takers was investigated through the formation of a novel method. The proposed method relied on marginal proportions of answer choice options as well as the transitional proportions between responses on item pairs. A chi square analysis was used to determine the degree of significance of each participant's patterned responding. The method was compared to the existing person-fit statistic lz (Drasgow, Levine & McLaughlin, 1987). Three publically available data sets - including a political science survey, an elementary school arithmetic scale and a general college course final exam - were used to test the occurrence of patterned responding and the ability of the proposed method to identify such unmotivated behavior.