Profile Analysis: A Closer Look at the PISA 2000 Reading Data

Abstract

When using IRT models in Educational Achievement Testing, the model is as a rule too simple to catch all the relevant dimensions in the test. It is argued that a simple model may nevertheless be useful but that it can be complemented with additional analyses. Such an analysis, called profile analysis, is proposed and applied to the reading data of Pisa 2000. Participating countries are compared on three different categorizations of the item material.

Keywords:

• profile analysis
• Rasch model
• PISA
• retrieval
• interpretation
• reflection

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Norman D. Verhelst

Norman D. Verhelst, National Institute for Educational Measurement (Cito) Arnhem, The Netherlands. The author wishes to thank Greg Macaskill at ACER for his effort to make the PISA 2000 data available.