von Gugelberg, Helene M.; Troche, Stefan (10 September 2022). Improving Measurement of Reasoning Ability Through Consideration of the Item-Position Effect (Unpublished). In: 52nd Congress of the German Psychological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie, DGPs). Hildesheim (DE). 10 to 15 September 2022.
The valid assessment of reasoning ability is paramount for studies on the structure of intelligence and on its cognitive, biological and social correlates. A valid assessment does not only imply homogeneity of the items in a given test but preferably also their tau-equivalence. The latter is often hard to achieve – even for homogeneous reasoning tests. Controlling for method effects, however, can improve the assessment. In the current study, 273 participants completed two new and open-access online-tests of reasoning ability – the Figural Matrices test (Kyllonen et al., 2019) and the Figural Analogy test (Bloom & Holling, 2018). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that an essentially tau-equivalent measurement model described the data poorly for both tests. The correlation between the two latent variables was merely acceptable given that the same construct was assessed (r=.56). However, considering the item-position effect (IPE) as a second latent variable with linearly increasing factor loadings improved the fit of both measurement models and allowed for describing reasoning ability as a latent variable with constant factor loadings. Thus, the measurements of reasoning ability had now the beneficial characteristics of tau-equivalence. After controlling for the IPE, the correlation between the two representations of reasoning ability increased to r=.72 indicating improved convergent validity. The two latent variables representing the IPE in the two tests did not significantly correlate. This opens an interesting debate on the task-specificity of the IPE given its most common interpretation as a reflection of the continuous learning of underlying rules from item to item.
Item Type: |
Conference or Workshop Item (Speech) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology 07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Personality Psychology, Differential Psychology and Diagnostics |
UniBE Contributor: |
von Gugelberg, Helene Martina, Troche, Stefan |
Subjects: |
100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology |
Language: |
German |
Submitter: |
Helene M. von Gugelberg |
Date Deposited: |
12 Dec 2022 11:07 |
Last Modified: |
12 Dec 2022 18:39 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/175688 |
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