NEPS technical report for mathematics: Scaling results of starting cohort 1 for six-year-old children

The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) aims at investigating the development of competencies across the whole life span and designs tests for assessing these different competence domains. In order to evaluate the quality of the competence tests, a wide range of analyses based on item response theory (IRT) were performed. This paper describes the data and scaling procedure for the mathematical competence test of six-year-old children in wave 7 of starting cohort 1 (newborns). The mathematics test contained 25 items with different response formats representing different content areas and cognitive components. The test was administered to 1,989 children. Their responses were scaled using the Rasch model. Item fit statistics, differential item functioning, Rasch-homogeneity, and the test ́s dimensionality were evaluated to ensure the quality of the test. These analyses showed that the test exhibited a good reliability (EAP/PV reliability = 0.810) and a good rasch model fit. Furthermore, test fairness could be confirmed for different subgroups. Overall, the mathematics test had acceptable psychometric properties that allowed for an estimation of reliable mathematics competence scores. Besides the scaling results, this paper also describes the data available in the Scientific Use File and provides the ConQuest syntax for scaling the data as well as the longitudinal linking parameters