Kruyen, Peter

Minimal requirements of the reliability of tests and questionnaire

Kruyen

Peter Kruyen (PhD student)
MTO, Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Tilburg University
P.O. Box 90153
5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 13 466 3527
E-mail: Peter Kruyen

Project: NWO project at Tilburg University

Project running from: 15 November 2008 – 15 December 2012

Supervisors:
– Prof. dr K. Sijtsma (Tilburg University)
– Dr W.H.M. Emons (Tilburg University)

Summary
A test’s reliability often is the basis for advise to test constructors, researchers and test users on which test to use for accurately classifying individuals in diagnostic categories. However, the classical reliability coefficient does not provide information that is adequate for this purpose. This study investigates how individual classification accuracy depends on properties of the test and its items, the population studied, and the decision-making problem. Its output will be tables that give the minimum quality requirements for tests and their constituent items, given a known population distribution and a well-defined classification problem.

Date of defence:  14 December 2012

Title of thesis:  Using short tests and questionnaires for making decisions about individuals: When is short too short.

ISBN:  978-90-5335-614-2