1| 3

Logits are a foreign concept to thegeneral public, so people frequentlyask us, “What is a logit?”

INTRODUCTION

Both the NCLEX-RN and NCLEX-PN are scaledusing Rasch’s (1960) model for dichotomous items,which uses logits as the unit of measure. As a result,person ability, item difficulty, and passing standardsare considered on this scale. Yet logits are a foreignconcept to the general public, so people frequentlyask us, “What is a logit?” The simple, but unsatisfy-ing answer is that “logit” is an abbreviation for “logodds units.” This brief will attempt to explain what arelog-odds units and why are they useful?

UNEVEN INCREASES

One of the requirements for measurement is that theunits be the same size across the full range of thecontinuum being considered. The problem is thatprobability is a concept that ranges from infinitelyunlikely to infinitely likely, yet the system used torepresent this idea is constrained to values from 0 to100 percent. As a result, there are floor and ceilingeffects (Figure 1). These undesirable effects are adirect consequence of describing an infinite continu-um using a constrained range. Therefore, theextreme categories (0% or 100%) are not infinitelyprecise, but rather infinitely wide.This becomes obvious when one assigns an oddsratio to a statement rather than a percentage. Thedifference in odds between 50% (1-to-1 odds) and54% (1.17-to-1 odds) is quite small. However, whenthe four percent increase occurs between 95% (19-to-1 odds) and 99% (99-to-1 odds), the change isdramatic. The change to 99.9% (999-to-1 odds) iseven more so. The conversion of a probability to anodds ratio successfully removes the ceiling effect,but the floor effect remains because odds less than1-to-1 quickly asymptote toward zero (Figure 2).

DEFINITION OF A LOGITTHOMAS O’NEILL PhD| NCSBN TESTING SERVICESNCLEX

PSYCHOMETRICTECHNICAL BRIEF

VOL 2 | FEBRUARY 2005

Figure 1Figure 2

A second problem with an odds ratio is thatdifferences between odds ratios do not necessarilymean the same thing. A change from 1 to 1 odds to9-to-1 odds is a tremendous increase, but thechange from 1001-to-1 odds to 1009-to-1odds is unnoticeable, yet it still represents anincrease of eight. Therefore, converting thesepercentages to an odds ratio is not enough.Answers to these problems can be found in the earlywritings on psychophysics. In 1860, Gustav Fechner(cited in Gleitman, 1981; source Fechner, 1860)noted that humans are sensitive to a wide range ofstimulus intensities. In order to compress this widespectrum into a manageable range, the nervous sys-tem automatically converts exponential leaps in stim-ulus into additive steps of perceived magnitude. Theformal expression of Fechner’s law is:S = k log Iin which,S = the perceived (subjective) change in themagnitude of the stimulus;K = a constant;I = the intensity of the stimulus.The application of Fechner’s law to the problem ofchanges in odds ratios is logical and convenient.Taking the logarithm of odds ratios converts theminto units that have the same meaning andremoves the floor effect problem (Figure 3).The logarithm of one is zero, the logarithm of oddsless than one can extend to negative infinity, and thelogarithm of odds greater than one can extend topositive infinity. The logarithmic transformation ofodds ratios has played an important role in the con-struction of social science instruments since the late1950s, with psychometricians using conditional prob-abilities and these principles to construct measure-ment systems. Although Rasch’s measurementmodel conceptually involves more thanunderstanding log-odds, log-odds are a fundamentalelement of the model.

HOW DOES THIS MEASURE NURSING ABILITY?

It has been demonstrated here that log-odds unitsare a useful unit of probability, but that seems ratherremoved from the idea of “nursing ability” which theNCLEX purports to measure. How are these twoideas connected?Using the candidate responses, the difficulty of theitems relative to each other (not relative to the candi-dates) is assessed. Once the hierarchy of difficultyfor items is established, then the ability of a candi-date can be described as the point on this item hier-archy, or continuum, where the candidate has a 50-50 chance of correctly answering an item. When acandidate encounters an item that is lower than hisor her ability, then he or she will have a greater than50-50 chance of answering the item correctly.

DEFINITION OF A LOGIT

NCLEX

PSYCHOMETRIC TECHNICAL BRIEF | VOL 2 | FEBRUARY 2005

2 | 3

Figure 3