Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 universty of Tehran

2 Tehran University

3 Faculty of Psychology and Education, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.

4 Associate professor, Division of Research and Assessment, Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

5 national organization for educational testing

Abstract

The Youden index is a commonly used summary measure for the Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve that both measures the performance of a criterion-referenced test and specifies the cutoff score value for the test. This research aims to compare and evaluate three empirical non-parametric estimation methods, kernel with Silverman's bandwidth method and kernel with maximum likelihood cross-validation bandwidth method to calculate the value of Youden's index. In this research, bootstrap standard error (BSE), root mean square error (RMSE), square integrated error (ISE) and mean square integrated error (MISE) indices were used to evaluate the performance. The results show that the kernel method with maximum likelihood cross-validation had a higher Youden index value. The obtained cutoff scores were 479 for the kernel methods and 465 for the empirical method. According to the acceptable results of the evaluation indices, kernel methods especially with the optimal bandwidth of the maximum likelihood cross-validation lead to more reliable estimates of the Youden index and the cutoff score in Tolimo test results.

Keywords