Intertemporal decisions: a proposal for evaluation with Item Response Theory

The evaluation of intertemporal decisions, through experiments, typically uses Classical Test Theory (CTT) to construct scales taking into account the percentage of each response. Using the Item Response Theory (IRT), which innovates by defining parameters that characterize the items, we propose the construction of a scale to evaluate decisions of this nature. To this end, using the responses given to a real experiment (Stevens, 2016), the one-dimensional two-parameter logistic model (2PLM) was used to evaluate the 87 dichotomous items of the experiment. As a result of the proposed analysis, one can evaluate the quality of each item of the instrument, that is, the ability to differentiate respondents and the positioning of items and respondents on an intertemporal scale. The main contributions include the definition of a quantitative intertemporal scale independent of respondents and the potential to differentiate and classify decision profiles of an intertemporal nature.