Prediction Models of Personality Item Responding

Recently, models of the process of responding to test items have been extended from the domain of ability tests to that of personality tests. A comparison of four such models was undertaken using three samples of respondents to Form E of the Personality Research Form, based on the responses of 301 high school students, 92 undergraduates, and 159 undergraduates. The models were the threshold model of Jackson (1968), a similar model based upon scale content, a cumulative model using scale scores, and a version of Cliffs (1977) multidimensional spatial model. The criteria used were the accuracies of the prediction of responses and of the distribution of item p-values. The multidimensional spatial model, the cumulative scale score model, and Jackson's threshold model all had predictive accuracies that were statistically significant. The threshold model based on content was only marginally more accurate than chance predictions. Results were discussed in terms of cognitive information processing approaches to item responding.