Wise and Kong (2005) defined an index to flag examinees not putting forth minimal effort, based on their response time. It is called the response time effort (RTE) index. Let K be the number of items in the test. The RTE for each examinee j is
where TCji is 1 if the response time on item i exceeds some minimum cutpoint, and 0 if it does not.
How do I interpret Response Time Effort?
This therefore evaluates the proportion of items for which the examinee spent less time than the specified cutpoint, and therefore ranges from 0 to 1. You, as the researcher, needs to decide what that cutpoint is: 10 second, 30 seconds… what makes sense for your exam?
How do I implement Response Time Effort?
Want to calculate Response Time Effort on your data? Download the free software SIFT. SIFT provides comprehensive psychometric forensics, flagging examinees with potential issues such as poor motivation, stealing content, or copying amongst examinees.
Nathan Thompson, PhD
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