Claims

Survey items show good discrimination overall, but several items exhibit ceiling effects that limit measuring change over time

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · design r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2026: tool and model accuracy changes quickly

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? All but three of the 32 items had item-total correlations greater than 0.40, indicating good discrimination. → Kao 2023 q2 i? Items with mean scores greater than 4 have ceiling effects, making them less than ideal for measuring changes over time. → Kao 2023 (2)

Evidence

Kao 2023

Kao, Y., Murphy, D., Hubbard Cheuoua, A., Kannan, P., Tsan, J., Jennings, K. E., Smith, H., Emanuel, S., & Miller, E. R. (2023). Survey development for assessing student computing career intentions: Technical report. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED638631

q2 · i? · design · r3

Classical item analysis in the large-scale field test computed item-total correlations for all 32 items. The article reports "all but three items on the survey had item–total correlations greater than 0.40", meeting the threshold for good discrimination.

"It can be seen from Tables 11 through 17 that all but three items on the survey had item–total correlations greater than 0.40, and therefore have good discrimination properties."

Kao 2023 (2)

Kao, Y., Murphy, D., Hubbard Cheuoua, A., Kannan, P., Tsan, J., Jennings, K. E., Smith, H., Emanuel, S., & Miller, E. R. (2023). Survey development for assessing student computing career intentions: Technical report. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED638631

q2 · i? · design · r3

The same item analysis found all item means exceeded 3, with some above 4. The article states items with means greater than 4 "can be considered to have ceiling effects", limiting sensitivity to change over time.

"The item means shown in Tables 11 through 17 are all greater than 3, and in some cases greater than 4, indicating that participants tended to agree or strongly agree with the items. Items with mean scores greater than 4 can be considered to have ceiling effects, making them less than ideal for a survey aiming to measure changes over time."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id survey-item-discrimination-and-ceiling-effects
title Survey items show good discrimination overall, but several items exhibit ceiling effects that limit measuring change over time
description Survey items show good discrimination overall, but several items exhibit ceiling effects that limit measuring change over time
status review
evidence_strength moderate
newest_evidence 2023
recheck_by 2026
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-10
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 2 — kao-2023, kao-2023-2

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