Use of Item Response Theory (IRT) in subjective assessment of concert halls

Abstract

Item response theory (IRT) is considered an improvement of the classical theory of tests to determine the educational level using the learning skills of students. The analysis of these tests together with the knowledge of different elements of the social and familiar context, makes it possible to evaluate the educational level of countries, as well as the effect of contextual variables on learning skills levels. The IRT method considers that there is a latent unidimensional continuous variable whose determination makes it possible to establish quantitatively the abilities of individuals and the difficulties of the questions. In this paper, we present an adaptation of this methodology to the analysis of ratings to questions in subjective rating surveys of concert halls, for experts and general public. The latent dimension (LD), provided by the IRT method, has been determined for the surveys of different concerts in 9 concert halls of different types. For each concert hall, a map of the distribution of LD values and subjective rating responses is shown, and the effect of the different context variables is analyzed.