A note on the use of mood's likelihood ratio test for item analyses involving 2 × 2 tables with small samples

Mood's likelihood ratio test is generally considered an unreliable x 2 approximation in 2 × 2 contingency tables containing expected cell frequencies less than five. Probability values were computed for 60 such tables as part of an item analysis for two 30-item alternate forms of a measure. The rank orders of the items, from best to worst differentiators, as determined separately by Mood's test and by Fisher's exact test correlated .97 for one form and .96 for the other.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45704/1/11336_2005_Article_BF02289818.pd