As part of the effort to develop an improved oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment system, Kara et al. estimated the ORF scores based on a latent variable psychometric model of accuracy and speed for ORF data via a fully Bayesian approach. This study further investigates likelihood-based estimators for the model-derived ORF scores, including maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), maximum a posteriori (MAP), and expected a posteriori (EAP), as well as their standard errors. The proposed estimators were demonstrated with a real ORF assessment dataset. Also, the estimation of model-derived ORF scores and their standard errors by the proposed estimators were evaluated through a simulation study. The fully Bayesian approach was included as a comparison in the real data analysis and the simulation study. Results demonstrated that the three likelihood-based approaches for the model-derived ORF scores and their standard error estimation performed satisfactorily.
Item difficulty and dimensionality often correlate, implying that unidimensional IRT approximations to multidimensional data (i.e., reference composites) can take a curvilinear form in the multidimensional space. Although this issue has been previously discussed in the context of vertical scaling applications, we illustrate how such a phenomenon can also easily occur within individual tests. Measures of reading proficiency, for example, often use different task types within a single assessment, a feature that may not only lead to multidimensionality, but also an association between item difficulty and dimensionality. Using a latent regression strategy, we demonstrate through simulations and empirical analysis how associations between dimensionality and difficulty yield a nonlinear reference composite where the weights of the underlying dimensions change across the scale continuum according to the difficulties of the items associated with the dimensions. We further show how this form of curvilinearity produces systematic forms of misspecification in traditional unidimensional IRT models (e.g., 2PL) and can be better accommodated by models such as monotone-polynomial or asymmetric IRT models. Simulations and a real-data example from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten are provided for demonstration. Some implications for measurement modeling and for understanding the effects of 2PL misspecification on measurement metrics are discussed.