An Item Response Theory Analysis of Residents’ Perceived Sporting Event Impacts

The evaluation of event impact is practical and helpful in increasing event quality. From residents’ 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 Prayag, G., Hosany, S., Nunkoo, R., & Alders, T. (2013). London residents’ support for the 2012 Olympic Games: The mediating effect of overall attitude. Tourism Management, 36, 629–640. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2012.08.003[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Ma, Ma, Wu, and Rotherham (2013 Ma, S. C., & Rotherham, I. D. (2016). Residents’ changed perceptions of sport event impacts: The case of the 2012 Tour de Taiwan. Leisure Studies, 35(5), 616–637. doi:10.1080/02614367.2015.1035313[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) 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.