Using the Partial Credit Model and Rasch Model to Examine the FOCIS Survey

This study examined the dimensionality and effectiveness of the five categories Likert Scale of the framework for observing and categorizing instructional strategies (FOCIS), a survey that measures students' preference for learning activities in science instructions, developed by Tai et al. in 2012. The data included 6546 students from 3rd to 12th grade including 4 school districts. The results show that the FOCIS survey has 7 dimensions measuring students’ preferences. This study only tests the effectiveness of the Competing dimension. Compared to the Partial Credit Model (PCM) model and Rasch model, condensing down the categories to dichotomous items fits the data better. The AIC and BIC decreased, and the infit outfit improved on the Rasch model.