We respond to the commentaries on Lyu, Bolt and Westby’s “Exploring the effects of item specific factors in sequential and IRTree models.” The commentaries raise important points that allow us to clarify our theoretical expectation for item specific factors in many educational and psychological test items. At the same time, we agree with the commentaries in acknowledging challenges associated with providing empirical evidence for their presence and reflect on strategies that might support their estimation. We maintain that the principal concern is the ambiguity item specific factors create in attempting to interpret or use the parameters beyond the first node.

我们回应了对 Lyu、Bolt 和 Westby 的“探索顺序模型和 IRTree 模型中项目特定因素的影响”的评论。这些评论提出了重要的观点，使我们能够澄清我们对许多教育和心理测试项目中的项目特定因素的理论预期。与此同时，我们同意这些评论，承认为它们的存在提供经验证据相关的挑战，并反思可能支持其估计的策略。我们认为，主要关注的是在尝试解释或使用第一个节点之外的参数时产生的模糊性项目特定因素。