Author: Jingxian (Cecilia) Zhang
, Dubravka Svetina Valdivia
& Kevin K. Byon
Summary:
The evaluation of event impact is practical and helpful in increasing event quality. From residents’s positive points of view, hosting sporting events brings both the community and the country together, increases investment, and stimulates administrative pollution controls. As such, scales were developed to assess various impacts associated with sporting events. However, some psychometric information is missing in existing event impacts research. The purpose of this study is to illustrate how to use Item Response Theory (IRT) to measure positive event impacts. The sample (N-‰=-‰423) was collected between May 14 and May 31, 2014, before the commencement of the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games in China. Positive event impacts measurements from both Prayag, Hosany, Nunkoo, and Alders (2013
) and Ma, Ma, Wu, and Rotherham (2013
) were revised. The results indicate that the IRT approach yields invariant item parameters (i.e., discrimination and difficulty). In addition, advantages and utility of IRT in the sporting event context are discussed.
