On the Estimation of Standard Errors in Cognitive Diagnosis Models

Michel Philipp, Carolin Strobl, Jimmy de la Torre and Achim Zeileis ()
Additional contact information
Carolin Strobl: University of Zurich
Jimmy de la Torre: The University of Hong Kong

Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 2018, vol. 43, issue 1, 88-115

Abstract: Cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs) are an increasingly popular method to assess mastery or nonmastery of a set of fine-grained abilities in educational or psychological assessments. Several inference techniques are available to quantify the uncertainty of model parameter estimates, to compare different versions of CDMs, or to check model assumptions. However, they require a precise estimation of the standard errors (or the entire covariance matrix) of the model parameter estimates. In this article, it is shown analytically that the currently widely used form of calculation leads to underestimated standard errors because it only includes the item parameters but omits the parameters for the ability distribution. In a simulation study, we demonstrate that including those parameters in the computation of the covariance matrix consistently improves the quality of the standard errors. The practical importance of this finding is discussed and illustrated using a real data example.

Keywords: cognitive diagnosis model; G-DINA; standard errors; information matrix (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/1076998617719728 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Estimation of Standard Errors in Cognitive Diagnosis Models (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jedbes:v:43:y:2018:i:1:p:88-115

DOI: 10.3102/1076998617719728

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().