BLOG QUALITY MEASUREMENT: ANALYSIS OF CRITERIA USING THE RASCH MODEL

Research in blog quality has become increasingly important, as preferences evolve in the way people gain information. For this study, blog quality categories and criteria were derived from metadata analysis and recent literature and then tested in two surveys. Rasch model analysis of responses provides systematic evidence of construct validity for the 11 quality categories and 49 criteria. The first survey, addressed to expert reviewers, supports the content aspect of construct validity, with one modification to a quality category. The second survey, given to blog readers, finds strong agreement with the quality items after the removal of three criteria because of redundancy. The second survey supports the substantive, structural, generalizability, external and consequential aspects of construct validity. These results constitute an important step toward development of a valid and widely applicable blog quality model.