Investigation of Generalized Partial Credit Models and the Relationship Between College Choice and Students' Ratings

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Innovative Methodologies in Item Response Theory (Table 20)

Abstract

An unofficial tradition for decades, each summer the mailboxes (now inboxes) of high school graduates are flooded with surveys about their college selection. Since the development of Enrollment Management, schools have collected a wealth of data used by researchers for many types of analyses. An Item Response Theory model may provide new insights into the relationship between survey responses and the latent trait of propensity to enroll. We examine the application of a Generalized Partial Credit Model to a survey section of 15 Likert-style items asking first-year admits to an undergraduate program to rate features of the school. In an ever-changing higher education environment, colleges must prioritize analyzing this data in order to build evidence-based enrollment management practices.

Authors

• Margeau Jong, Boston College

• Zhushan Mandy Li, Boston College