A classification of university courses based on students’ satisfaction: an application of a two-level mixture item response model

Silvia Bacci () and Michela Gnaldi

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 2015, vol. 49, issue 3, 927-940

Abstract: Over the past years, Italian universities have come under increased pressure to be more competitive and attract more students, and students’ satisfaction has received increasing attention. Students’ opinions about a few aspects of academic life are sought by Italian universities in the form of a satisfaction feedback questionnaire. The aim of this paper is to classify university courses into homogeneous classes with respect to the level of students’ satisfaction through the use of a two-level mixture item response model. The data are drawn from the Italian questionnaire on students’ satisfaction administered at a Faculty of Political Sciences. The latent variables measured by the questionnaire are detected performing a model-based hierarchical clustering. Then, a special case of multilevel mixture factor model characterised by an item response parameterisation and discrete latent variables at all hierarchical levels is estimated. The study allowed us to ascertain (i) the latent dimensionality of students’ satisfaction with higher education courses; (ii) the varied effect of first and second-level covariates on the satisfaction dimensions; and (iii) the different sources of strength/weaknesses of the best and worst courses. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Generalized partial credit model; Item response theory; Latent class model; Multidimensionality; Multilevel model; Partial credit model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11135-014-0101-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:spr:qualqt:v:49:y:2015:i:3:p:927-940

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11135-014-0101-0

Access Statistics for this article

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology is currently edited by Vittorio Capecchi

More articles in Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().