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Psychometric Item Validation Using Virtual Respondents with Trait-Response Mediators

Created by
  • Haebom

Author

Sungjib Lim, Woojung Song, Eun-Ju Lee, Yohan Jo

Scale Development for LLM: A Virtual Respondent Simulation Framework

Outline

This paper highlights the need for scalable questionnaire generation suitable for LLMs, as psychometric surveys designed to evaluate the characteristics of large-scale language models (LLMs) increase. In particular, ensuring construct validity, which verifies that the generated items truly measure the intended characteristics, is crucial. While large-scale, costly human data collection has traditionally been required, this study presents a framework for simulating virtual respondents using LLMs. This framework considers parameters to account for the factors that cause diverse responses to survey items with identical characteristics. By simulating respondents with different parameters, it identifies questionnaire items that effectively measure the intended characteristics. Experimental results on three psychological trait theories (Big5, Schwartz, and VIA) demonstrate that the proposed parameter generation method and simulation framework effectively identify items with high validity. LLMs demonstrate the ability to generate plausible parameters from characteristic definitions and simulate respondent behavior to verify item validity. The problem formulation, metrics, methodology, and dataset of this study suggest new directions for cost-effective questionnaire development and a deeper understanding of human survey response simulation in LLMs.

Takeaways, Limitations

Takeaways:
LLM-based virtual respondent simulations suggest the potential for cost-effective questionnaire development.
Ensuring construct validity of questionnaire items by utilizing parameter concepts
Proof of applicability to various psychological trait theories, including Big5, Schwartz, and VIA.
Provides new insights into the LLM's survey response simulation capabilities.
Supporting follow-up research by making the data sets and code used in the study public.
Limitations:
Further research is needed to determine the accuracy of virtual respondent simulations and their differences from real human responses.
This experiment was limited to a specific psychological theory, and further verification is needed to generalize to other theories and fields.
Results may vary depending on LLM performance and training data.
Subjectivity and potential bias in parameter selection and simulation setup
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