“…The problem of estimating linking functions for the dichotomous IRT models has been addressed in earlier literature, mainly for the mean/mean method (Loyd & Hoover, ), mean/sigma method (Marco, ), the response‐function methods (Haebara, ; Stocking & Lord, 1980), and more recently the precision‐weighted average methods (Barrett & van der Linden, ). For the 3PL model, which explains the probabilities of a correct response for test‐taker with ability on items as where and are parameters for the difficulty and discriminating power of item i , respectively, and represents the height of the lower asymptote to the probability for the item, the linking functions are …”