The Science and Practice of Item Response Theory in Organizations

Item response theory (IRT) is a modeling approach that links responses to test items with underlying latent constructs through formalized statistical models. This article focuses on how IRT can be used advance science and practice in organizations. We describe established applications of as scale development tool new research testing enables organizational researchers improve their understanding workers focus models application four key areas: testing, questionnaire responding, construct validation, measurement equivalence scores. In so doing, we highlight novel developments such explanatory IRT, multidimensional random item models, more complex processes ideal point tree potentially existing these areas. As starting for readers interested learning applying recent research, provide concrete examples data R code.