Use of the many facet rasch model in resolving standard setting issues

In selecting the “right” standard setting method several issues are of primary concern: correspondence of the judgment task to the measured construct, capacity of the standard setting method to deal with diverse item types and procedures for dealing with judgment-related variability. This paper describes a standard setting study that utilizes a standard setting procedure based on the Objective Standard Setting Method (Stone, 1996) and the Many-facet Rasch model (Linacre, 1989), which has the potential to deal with these standard setting issues. Findings suggest that this approach not only has the capacity to deal with different item types and judgment-related variability but it also facilitates greater efficiency in the standard setting process. However, as with other model-based standard setting methods, the integrity of resulting cutscores is dependent on a clear understanding of the measured construct.