NEPS technical report for mathematics: Scaling results of Starting Cohort 1 for eight-year-old children (wave 9)
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Publication data
| By | Lara Aylin Petersen, Tanja Kutscher, Tessa Beyer, David Bednorz |
| Original language | English |
| Published in | (NEPS Survey Papers; No. 111) |
| Pages | 31 |
| Editor (Publisher) | Leibniz Institut für Bildungsverläufe, Nationales Bildungspanel |
| DOI/Link | https://doi.org/10.5157/NEPS:SP111:1.0 |
| Publication status | Published – 05.2024 |
The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) aims at investigating the development of
competencies across the whole life span and designs tests for assessing these different
competence domains. To evaluate the quality of the competence tests, a wide range of
analyses based on item response theory (IRT) were performed. This paper describes the data
and scaling procedure for the mathematical competence test for 8-year-old children of
starting cohort 1 (newborns). The mathematics test consists of 20 items that represent
different content areas as well as different cognitive components and use different response
formats. The test was administered to 1,632 students. A partial-credit model was used for
scaling the data. Item fit statistics, differential item functioning, Rasch-homogeneity, and the
test´s dimensionality were evaluated to ensure the quality of the test. The results show that
the test exhibited a good reliability (EAP/PV reliability = .76) and that the items satisfactorily
fitted the model. Furthermore, comparable measurements could be confirmed for different
subgroups. Limitations of the test were some recognizable gaps at the upper end of the scale’s item difficulties. Overall, the results revealed good psychometric properties of the
mathematics test, thus supporting the estimation of a reliable mathematics competence
score. Besides the scaling results, this paper also describes the data available in the Scientific
Use File and provides the R syntax for scaling the data.
