Bayesian Prior Choice in IRT Estimation Using MCMC and Variational Bayes

Author(s)Natesan,Prathiba
Author(s)Nandakumar,Ratna
Author(s)Minka,Tom
Author(s)Rubright,Jonathan D.
Ordered AuthorPrathiba Natesan, Ratna Nandakumar, Tom Minka, Jonathan D.Rubright
UD AuthorNandakumar, Ratna
Date Accessioned2017-07-13T20:01:49Z
Date Available2017-07-13T20:01:49Z
Copyright Date2016 Natesan,Nandakumar,Minkaand,Rubright
Publication Date2016-09-27
DescriptionPublisher's PDF
AbstractThis study investigated the impact of three prior distributions: matched, standard vague, and hierarchical in Bayesian estimation parameter recovery in two and one parameter models. Two Bayesian estimation methods were utilized: Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and the relatively new, Variational Bayesian (VB). Conditional (CML) and Marginal Maximum Likelihood (MML) estimates were used as baseline methods for comparison. Vague priors produced large errors or convergence issues and are not recommended. For both MCMC and VB, the hierarchical and matched priors showed the lowest root mean squared errors (RMSEs) for ability estimates: RMSEs of difficulty estimates were similar across estimation methods. For the standard errors (SEs), MCMC-hierarchical displayed the largest values across most conditions. SEs from the VB estimation were among the lowest in all but one case. Overall, VB-hierarchical, VB-matched, and MCMC-matched performed best. VB with hierarchical priors are recommended in terms of their accuracy, and cost and (subsequently) time effectiveness.
DepartmentUniversity of Delaware, School of Education
CitationNatesan, P., Nandakumar, R., Minka, T., & Rubright, J. D. (2016). Bayesian prior choice in IRT estimation using MCMC and variational bayes. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1422. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01422
DOI10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01422
ISSN1664-1078
URLhttp://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/21538
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFrontiers Media SA
dc.rightsCC BY
dc.sourceFrontiers in Psychology
dc.source.urihttp://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01422/full
TitleBayesian Prior Choice in IRT Estimation Using MCMC and Variational Bayes
TypeArticle
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