The Integration of Classical Testing Theory and Item Response Theory

Abstract

The psychological and educational measurement theory, which was born in the early 20th century, has two critical theoretical schools: one is the Classical Testing Theory (CTT) that dominated in the first half of the 20th century, and the another is Item Response Theory (IRT), which developed from the 1950s to the 20s and reached its peak in the 1980s. Based on a prior study of key concepts of CTT and IRT, this article compared the two theories mentioned above and concluded that these two different theoretical schools are tending to be integrated which will be the direction of psychological and educational measurement in the future.