Multidimensional Item Response Theory and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism

This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Quantitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] While many studies have examined the structure, validity, and reliability of the Force Concept Inventory, far less research has been performed on other conceptual instruments in widespread use in physics education research. This study performs a confirmatory analysis of the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) guided by a theoretical model of expert understanding of electricity and magnetism. Multidimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) with the discrimination matrix constrained to the theoretical model was used to investigate two large datasets (N 1 2014 and N 2 2657) from two research universities in the United States. The optimal model identified by MIRT was similar, but not identical, for the two datasets and had very good model fit with comparative fit indices of 0.975 and 0.984, respectively. The most parsimonious optimal model required 23 independent principles of electricity and magnetism and was significantly better fitting than a more general model dividing the CSEM into 6 general topics. The optimal models for the two samples were quite similar, sharing 22 of a possible 26 conceptual principles. Most of the overall item difficulties and discriminations were significantly different between the two samples; however, the rank order of the overall difficulty and discrimination were generally similar. There was much more similarity between the discrimination by item of the individual principles. Five items had a difficulty ranking that was substantially different between the two samples, indicating that while generally similar, relative difficulty does depend on the student population and instructional environment.