Rules of assigning values to control variables (key-words)

Do not worry about these unless Winsteps does not respond to your control file the way you expected. If possible, compare your control file with what is shown in Table 0 of your report output file in order to isolate the problem.

 

1. Values are assigned to control variables by typing the name of the control variable (or enough of it to disambiguate it), an equal sign, "=", and the value, e.g.

TABLES=11011011100

or

TAB=1101101110   this is enough of TABLES to make clear what you mean.

 

2. You must use one line for each assignment, but continuation lines are permitted.

To continue a line, put a + at the end of the line. Then put a + at the start of the text in the next line. The two lines will be joined together so that the + signs are squeezed out, e.g.,

TITLE = "Analysis of medical+

 + research data"

is interpreted as

TITLE = "Analysis of medical research data"

 

Continuation lines "+" are helpful to make control files fit on your screen.

 

CODES = 01020304+

+0506+

         +0708

is interpreted as

CODES = 0102030405060708

 

To comment out a continuation line:

; CODES = 01020304+

; +05060708

 

3. The control variables may be listed in any order.

 

4. Character strings must be enclosed in 'single quotes' or "double quotes" when they contain blanks, e.g.,

TITLE="Rasch Analysis of Test Responses"

or

TITLE='Rasch Analysis of Test Responses'

Quotes are not required for single words containing no blanks, e.g. PFILE=kctpf.txt

 

5. The control variables may be in upper or lower case or mixed,

e.g., Pfile = Person.txt

 

6. Blanks before or after control variables, and before or after equal signs are ignored, e.g.

TITLE="Test Report"

and

TITLE = "Test Report"

are equally correct.

 

7. Commas at the end of lines are ignored, so equally correct are:

  NAME1 = 33,

and

  NAME1 = 33

 

8. Control variables can be made into comments, and so be ignored, by entering a semi-colon in column 1, e.g.

 ; FITP=3 is ignored

 

9. When all control variables (required or optional) have been assigned values,

type &END (in upper or lower case) on the next line, e.g.,

Title ="A 30 Item test"

NI = 30

 ; this is a comment: person names in columns 1-20.

ITEM1= 21

&END

 

10. Values may be expressions, with no internal spaces

USCALE = 2*10  ; 20