Generalizability theory: conceptual framework

The nature of score variance:

The variance is a measure of variability. It is calculated by taking the average of

squared deviations from the mean.

Variance tells you the degree of spread in your data set. The more spread the data,
the larger the variance is in relation to the mean.

Variance in education?

The variance process is designed to formalize the method by which a student may
appeal a decision relating to knowledge, skills, dispositions, or program
requirements. In completing the request, students must identify the type of
variance they are requesting and include a letter of rationale.

Types of Variance
In cost accounting, variance is very important to evaluate the performance of
company for increasing its efficiency.

In variance analysis, we compare actual and standard cost and revenue to know
whether it is favorable or unfavorable.

Favorable variance (F) shows that standard cost is less than actual cost or standard
revenue is more than actual revenue.

But unfavorable or adverse (U or A) variance shows that actual cost is more than
standard cost or actual revenue is less than standard revenue.

Types of variance are the steps to deep study of variance. We classify variance
with following ways.
1st Type of Variance: Direct Material Variance

Direct material variance shows the difference between the actual cost of material
of actual units and standard cost of material of standard units.

It is also the total of material price variance, material quantity variance. If there is
favorable material quantity variance and unfavorable material price variance or
vice versa, direct material cost may be either favorable or unfavorable because it is
total of material price and material quantity variance.

2nd Type of Variance: Labor Variance

Labor variance shows the variance of labor cost. It is the difference between
standard cost of labor for actual production and the actual cost of labor for actual
production.

3rd Type of Variance: Overhead Variance

Overhead Variance shows the variance of all indirect cost. It is the difference
between standard cost of overhead for actual output and actual cost of overhead for
actual output.

4th Type of Variance: Sales Variance

Sales variance is that type of variance which shows the difference between actual
sales and standard sales.

But in unfavorable sales variance, our standard sale is less than actual sale. Sales
variance is good way to calculate the responsibility of sales department.

True and error variance

The true measure is assumed to be the genuine value of whatever is being measured In Rasch
terms, "True" valiance is the "adjusted" variance (observed variance adjusted for measurement
error). Error Variance is a mean square error (derived from the model) inflated by misfit to the
model encountered in the data.
 Error variance

The element of variability in a score that is produced by extraneous factors, such as

measurement imprecision, and is not attributable to the independent variable or
other controlled experimental manipulations.

True variation

Naturally occurring variability within or among research participants. This

variance is inherent in the nature of individual participants and is not due to
measurement error, imprecision of the model used to describe the variable of
interest, or other extrinsic factors.

Calculate error variance?

Count the number of observations that were used to generate the standard error of
the mean. This number is the sample size. Multiply the square of the standard
error (calculated previously) by the sample size (calculated previously). The result
is the variance of the sample.

Objective measurement

Objective measurement is the repetition of a unit amount that maintains its size,
within an allowable range of error, no matter which instrument, intended to
measure the variable of interest, is used and no matter who or what relevant person
or thing is measured.

An objective measurement estimate of amount stays constant and unchanging

(within the allowable error) across the persons measured, across different brands of
instruments, and across instrument users.

The goal of objective measurement is to produce a reference standard common

currency for the exchange of quantitative value, so that all research and practice
relevant to a particular variable can be conducted in uniform terms.

Objective measurement research tests the extent to which a given number can be
interpreted as indicating the same amount of the thing measured, across persons
measured, and brands of instrument.
Our intuitions about measurement are confirmed with everyday trips to the grocery
store.

For instance, when selecting apples from a bin, one may readily see that three large
apples might contain twice as much edible fruit as three small ones.

To account for this difference, the cost is not proportionate with the actual,
concrete number of apples, but with their abstract weight.

Most measurement efforts in the human sciences tally differently sized test or
survey answers and stop there, mistakenly treating these concrete counts as
abstract measures of amount.

Over 70 years of objective measurement research and practice have established

conclusively 1) the viability of scaling different instruments intended to measure a
common variable onto a single reference standard ruler, and 2) the value of
developing objective measurement based construct theories.

The extent to which the unit amount remains constant within a particular range of
error cannot be assumed.

Research in objective measurement is largely a matter of asserting and testing

hypotheses concerning the quantitative status of psychosocial variables.

Such research might begin from an instrument, data, a theory, or some combination
of these, but proceeds in a manner that uses each of these to check and improve the
other two.

Objective measurement can be achieved and maintained employing a wide variety

of approaches and methods.

These include testing for concatenation, conjoint additively, Guttmann ordering,

infinite divisibility, parameter separation or sufficiency.

Objective measurement operates within the research traditions of fundamental

measurement theory, item response theory, and latent trait theory.
 Facets of measurement

1. Guttman's "Facet" Theory

Early test analysis was based on a simple rectangular conception: people encounter
items. This could be termed a "two-facet" situation, loosely borrowing a term from
Guttman's (1959) "Facet Theory".

From a Rasch perspective, the person's ability, competence, motivation, etc.,

interacts with the item's difficulty, easiness, challenge, etc., to produce the
observed outcome.

In order to generalize, the individual persons and items are here termed "elements"
of the "person" and "item" facets.

2. The Facets "many-facets" approach

Paired comparisons, such as a Chess Tournament or a Football League, are one-

facet situations.

The ability of one player interacts directly with the ability of another to produce
the outcome. The one facet is "players", and each of its elements is a player.

This can be extended easily to a non-rectangular two facet design in order to

estimate the advantage of playing first, e.g., playing the white pieces in Chess.

The Rasch model then becomes:

Where player n of ability Bn plays the white pieces against player m of ability Bm,
and Aw is the advantage of playing white.

A three-facet situation occurs when a person encountering an item is rated by a

judge.

The person's ability interacting with the item's difficulty is rated by a judge with a
degree of leniency or severity.
A rating in a high category of a rating scale could equally well result from high
ability, low difficulty, or high leniency.

Four-facet situations occur when a person performing a task is rated on items of

performance by a judge.

For instance, in Occupational Therapy, the person is a patient. The rater is a

therapist. The task is "make a sandwich". The item is "find materials".

A typical Rasch model for a four-facet situation is:

Where Di is the difficulty of item i, and Fik specifies that each item i has its own
rating scale structure, i.e., the "partial credit" model.

And so on, for more facets. In these models, no one facet is treated any differently
from the others.

This is the conceptualization for "Many-facet Rasch Measurement" (Linacre, 1989)

and the Facets computer program.

Of course, if all judges are equally severe, then all judge measures will be the
same, and they can be omitted from the measurement model without changing the
estimates for the other facets.

But the inclusion of "dummy" facets, such as equal-severity judges, or gender, age,
item type, etc., is often advantageous because their element-level fit statistics are
informative.

3. The "Generalizability" approach

Multi-facet data can be conceptualized in other ways. In Generalizability theory,

one facet is called the "object of measurement".

All other facets are called "facets", and are regarded as sources of unwanted
variance. Thus, in G-theory, a rectangular data set is a "one-facet design".
4. The LLTM "Linear Logistic Test Model" approach

In Gerhard Fischer's Linear Logistic Test Model (LLTM), all non-person facets are
conceptualized as contributing to item difficulty. So, the dichotomous LLTM
model for a four-facet situation (Fischer, 1995) is:

Where p is the total count of all item, task and judge elements, and wil identifies
which item, task and judge elements interact with person n to produce the current
observation.

The normalizing constraints are indicated by {c}. In this model, the components of
difficulty are termed "factors" instead of "elements", so the model is said to
estimate p factors rather than 4 facets.

This is because the factors were originally conceptualized as internal components

of item design, rather than external elements of item administration.

Operationally, this is a two-facet analysis combined with a linear decomposition.

5. The RUMM2020 "Factor" approach

David Andrich's Rasch Unidimensional Measurement Models (RUMM) takes a

fourth approach. Here the rater etc. facets are termed "factors" when they are
modeled within the person or item facets, and the elements within the factors are
termed "levels".

Our four-facet model is expressed as a two-facet person-item model, with the item
facet defined to encompass three factors. The "rating scale" version is:

where Di is an average of all δmij for item i, Am is an average of all δmij for task m,
etc.
This approach is particularly convenient because it can be applied to the output of
any two-facet estimation program, by hand or with a spreadsheet program.
Operationally, this is a two-facet analysis followed by a linear decomposition.

Missing δmij may need to be imputed. With a fully-crossed design, a robust

averaging method is standard-error weighting (RMT 8:3 p. 376).

With some extra effort, element-level quality-control fit statistics can also be
computed.