International studies like PISA use context student or school questionnaires to collect data on student family background, attitudes and learning context. Questionnaire constructs are typically measured using dichotomous or Likert-type items. Scaling of questionnaire items in order to obtain measures of family background, student attitudes or…

One of the most salient requirements for international educational research is the use of comparable measures. For the comparison of student performance across countries the use of item response theory (IRT) scaling techniques facilitates the collection of cross-nationally comparable measures. But there is also a need for valid and comparable…