There is a philosophical or paradigm difference between Rasch Measurement Theory (RMT) and Item Response Theory (IRT).

With the Rasch Measurement paradigm, the emphasis when conducting an item analysis is in identifying and studying anomalies in the data disclosed by the Rasch Measurement model whereas in the paradigm of IRT models, the emphasis is on finding a model that best characterizes the given data.

A Rasch Measurement Model analysis is consistent with the Rasch Measurement paradigm when the researcher is in control when accumulating evidence of the validity of the person responses to the items comprising the instrument.

• The Rasch Measurement paradigm requires that anyone attempting a Rasch Measurement analysis needs to be in dynamic and interactive control of the analysis and to be able to follow the evidence to see where the responses may be invalid.
• It is important to be able to diagnose very quickly where the misfit to the Rasch Measurement Model is the worst, and then proceed to try to understand this misfit in terms of the construction of the items and the understanding of the variable in terms of its theoretical development.
• The RUMM2030 program has been developed with the Rasch Measurement paradigm and with the case study conceptualization of a Rasch Measurement Model analysis. It is used interactively to move between many different graphics and corresponding statistics in making decisions.
• The easy interactive moving between statistics and graphs also makes RUMM2030 an ideal tool for teaching and learning about the Rasch Measurement Model.
• As the RUMM2030 program is a full Windows application, the employment of all the easy to use Windows characteristic features makes the program such a labour saving application. No need to jump constantly back-and-forth to amend and/or complete and time consuming batch file coding tasks which is a severe distraction to the diagnostic tasks at hand - merely select the requisite options and move rapidly between plots and displays.