WSEAS Transactions on Business and Economics
Print ISSN: 1109-9526, E-ISSN: 2224-2899
Volume 23, 2026
Comparative Evaluation of Three Item Response Theory Models within an Educational Measurement System: Application to the Moroccan National Student Assessment Program in Science
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Abstract: Morocco faces the dual challenge of enhancing the quality of education while ensuring equity of opportunities. Established in 2008, the National Program for Assessing Students' Achievements (PNEA) was conceived as a policy instrument to systematically address this concern. This article focuses on the 2019 edition of the program and uses IRT (Item Response Theory) to sequentially apply the one-, two-, and three-parameter models. The aim is to assess their appropriateness in capturing the characteristics of the dataset and enhancing the precision of student evaluations. The study contributes to the refinement of the framework for assessing academic achievement, in accordance with the overarching goal of enhancing educational quality.
Keywords:
Educational Measurement, Educational Quality, Educational assessment in Morocco, Psychometric analysis, Item Response Theory (IRT), comparison of IRT models, Model selection and Goodness-of-Fit
Pages: 1174-1183
DOI: 10.37394/23207.2026.23.91