Does the context effect exist in the multiple alternative forced-choice personality measurement?

A fundamental assumption in item response theory (IRT) models for multiple-alternative forced-choice (MAFC) personality measurement is that the utility of each statement (choice option) remains independent and invariant, irrespective of factors like the context effect.However, investigations on the confounding impact of the context effect on MAFC personality measurements are scarce.This study examined the impact of context effect on the utility and estimation of the parameters of each statement of the MAFC personality measurement.Thereon, a parameter estimation was conducted using the Thurstonian IRT model, assuming the presence or absence of context effects.Parameter estimates and Bayesian posterior distributions were compared from the perspective of the correlation of trait scores, an information criterion, explained variance, 95\% credible interval, the Bayes factor, and the overlap rate of the posterior distributions.The study's results suggest that the context effect can be considered small enough to be practically negligible.