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An Item Response Theory Analysis of the Conners Teacher's Rating ScaleThomas Gumpel is an assistant professor and is currently at the Department of Special Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include social skills training and sociometric status, school violence, item response theory modeling, and international comparative policy analysis in special education.
Mark Wilson is a professor of education at the University of California-Berkely. He specializes in educational and psychological measurement and educational statistics.
Ruth Shalev is a pediatric neurologist with research interests in developmental cognitive disorders, particularly development dyscalculia. Address: Thomas Gumpel, Department of Special Education, School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel 91905 (e-mail: tgumpel@vms.huji.ac.il). We used an item response theory (IRT) measurement model to examine the 28–item Conners Teacher's Rating Scale (CTRS) for the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Using an Israeli sample of 453 pairs of respondents (parents and teachers), we broke down our sample into nonclinical (n = 306) and clinical (n = 147) subsamples. IRT analyses based on a rating scale model revealed structural inadequacies involving the apparent inappropriateness of the 4-point Likert-type scale used by the CTRS. Additionally, IRT analyses were able to shed light on differences in the structure of the latent trait for the ADHD variable as measured by the CTRS for all four groups of respondents. Implications for the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD are presented.
Journal of Learning Disabilities, Vol. 31, No. 6,
525-532 (1998) This article has been cited by other articles:
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