The Evaluation for the Impact of Initial Values on Accuracy of Estimation of 2PLM Using MCMC

To implement a Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC) method,one of important issues is the choice of starting values.If MCMC sampler started at poor initial values,the chain is taking a long time to move around the parameter space,therefore it will take longer to converge to the stationary distribution.To remedy the defect of MCMC,the special initial values of the unknown parameters in the 2-parameter Logistic model are employed to be the initial values of the MCMC.The results of the Monte Carlo simulation show that the scheme could greatly speed up MCMC convergence.