Comparative analysis of full and reduced versions of Competence Scale Study using Rasch with brazilian college students

The aim of this study was to compare the original version of Escala de Competência de Estudo – ECE (C&T), with the reduced one by using the Item Response Theory. A sample of 126 college students, male and female, between 17 and 48 years old (M = 24.65, SD = 6.54) answered the test. The precision coefficients obtained were .91 for the original scale and .90 for the reduced one, indicating a good level of precision for both. The scale’s adjustment to the Rasch Model was analyzed, resulting an average error of 0.11 (SD = 0.02). The scale with 54 items presents an item’s infit mean of 1.00 (SD = .18), and the reduced scale presents an item’s infit mean of 1.01 (SD = .20), and the outfit’s mean value is 1,02 (SD = 0.41). The difficulty of the items was similar in the two scales. The results presented a better adjustment for the reduced scale, seeing that there were less misfit items, in terms of quantity and value.