Item Text

The standard for item information

We have begun to incorporate the text of the items used to produce stimuli in the IRW. This information is available here. A list of tables with item text can be generated using the irw_list_itemtext_tables() function (via the irw package).

These data are structured as follows:

  • table This identifier can be used to link to the IRW response data.

  • section_id This is an identifier for a group of items that share a common context. It is conceptually equivalent to the item_family element in the IRW standard and is used to annotate information about, for example, testlets (i.e., items grouped under a single reading passage).

  • item This is a persistent identifier for the probe being used to measure, matching the item field in the core IRW dataset.

  • instrument This is the full, human-readable name or title for the instrument identified by the table column.

  • instructions This contains the literal text of the instructions provided to the participant for the overall instrument.

  • section_prompt This contains the literal text of a shared prompt, such as a reading passage, that applies to all items within a given section_id.

  • item_text This is the literal text of the specific prompt or question associated with an item.

  • correct_response This is the scoring key for a given item. This field is left blank for items that do not have a correct response. For items with multiple correct answers, values are separated by a semicolon.

  • option_text This is the literal text for a specific response option available for an item.

  • resp This is the response value assigned to a specific option_text. It should match the numeric, ordinal resp value found in the response-level IRW dataset.

Some additional notes about the item text

  • In some cases, we do not have ready access to the ‘key’ which would allow us to translate multiple choice options into scored responses. The item response data will have a scored response in the resp column in such cases while the item text will retain the categorical option in the resp_raw column.
  • When items are prompting some kind of behavior that gets scored, there may not always be text associated with individual resp values.