Measuring art knowledge: Item response theory and differential item functioning analysis of the Aesthetic Fluency Scale.
Katherine N. Cotter, David F. Chen, Alexander P. Christensen, Kyung Yong Kim, Paul J. Silvia
Abstract
The Aesthetic Fluency Scale is a commonly used measure of people's art knowledge.This scale was initially developed for museum visitors, but its usage has expanded to other populations, including non-arts students.The present research used an Item Response Theory approach to better understand the scale's functioning in two samples-artistically engaged individuals (i.e., museum visitors and art students) and non-arts students-and any differences in scale properties between the samples (i.e., differential item functioning).Overall, terms related to art styles were easiest, the non-arts students had lower scores than the artistically engaged, and most items showed marked differences between the two samples.These results suggest that using this scale to draw comparisons between these populations is inappropriate.Our results also identify avenues for future development of the scale, including expanding the pool of terms used and revisiting the number of response options.