ERIC Number: EJ761593
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2003
Pages: 24
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0027-3171
EISSN: N/A
Investigation and Treatment of Missing Item Scores in Test and Questionnaire Data
Sijtsma, Klaas; van der Ark, L. Andries
Multivariate Behavioral Research, v38 n4 p505-528 2003
This article first discusses a statistical test for investigating whether or not the pattern of missing scores in a respondent-by-item data matrix is random. Since this is an asymptotic test, we investigate whether it is useful in small but realistic sample sizes. Then, we discuss two known simple imputation methods, person mean (PM) and two-way (TW) imputation, and we propose two new imputation methods, response-function (RF) and mean response-function (MRF) imputation. These methods are based on few assumptions about the data structure. An empirical data example with simulated missing item scores shows that the new method RF was superior to the methods PM, TW, and MRF in recovering from incomplete data several statistical properties of the original complete data. Methods TW and RF are useful both when item score missingness is ignorable and nonignorable.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A