Examining Local Item Dependence in a Cloze Test with the Rasch Model

Document Type : Original Research Article

Authors

1 Doctor of Science, Associate Professor, Department of Uzbek History, Tashkent State Pedagogical University named after Nizami, Bunyodkor Street 27, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

2 Ph.D, Philosophy Sciences, Department of Social Sciences, New Uzbekistan University, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

3 3DSc, Professor, Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation, Alisher Navo'i Tashkent State University of Uzbek Language and Literature.

4 4Associate Professor, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages for Academic Affairs, Jizzakh State Pedagogical University, Jizzakh, Uzbekistan.

5 Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

Local item dependence (LID) refers to the situation where responses to items in a test or questionnaire are influenced by responses to other items in the test. This could be due to shared prompts, item content similarity, and deficiencies in item construction. LID due to a shared prompt is highly probable in cloze tests where items are nested within a passage. The purpose of this research is to examine the occurrence and magnitude of LID in a cloze test. A cloze test was analyzed with the Rasch model and locally dependent items were identified with the residual correlations. Findings showed that three pairs of items were locally dependent. When these items were removed from the analysis, test reliability dropped but item fit and unidimensionality improved. Removing the three locally dependent items did not affect person ability mean and standard deviation, though. The findings are discussed in terms of LID detection and modeling in the context of cloze test and language testing.

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