Bayesian Partial Credit Model and Its Applications in Science Education

Partial Credit Model (PCM), belonging to the Rasch family model, is widely used in analyzing ordinal polytomous response data in education and psychology. This chapter aims to introduce science education researchers unfamiliar with it to a user-friendly and flexible tool for conducting Rasch analyses. We first introduce what the PCM is and demonstrate the Bayesian estimation procedure in R with a Stan package using a simulated dataset. We then show how to apply the PCM in an explanatory way using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) dataset and illustrate how to obtain qualitatively meaningful relationships between explanatory variables and students’ scientific literacy. Bayesian Partial Credit Model and Its Applications in Science Education.