The Degree of Challenge of Achieving Sustainable Development Goals on Turkey Firms: Item Response Model Approach (original) (raw)

Sustainability can be determined as a way to protect the natural environment and biodiversity while meeting human needs. In 2015, the United Nations set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to create a better world in which to live. The challenges associated with achieving these goals have been documented in the literature, often with descriptive statistics and interpretations. The purpose of this study is to utilize the Item Response Theory (IRT) to assess the challenges of firms in Turkey to achieve sustainable development goals. In 2022, binary data was constructed from the sustainability and annual reports of 151 companies in Turkey. The Rasch model was identified as the most fitting model based on the results of the information criteria. Following the testing of the various assumptions, it was determined that the model is fully compatible with the infit, outfit, unidimensionality, and point serial correlation statistics. The difficulty levels of the items were identified using difficulty parameters and a Wright Map. The item difficulty levels were distributed as follows: It can be reasonably deduced that SDGs 5, 8, 12, and 13 can be readily achieved; SDGs 4, 7, 9, and 17 can also be attained with relative ease; SDGs 3 and 10 can be achieved with a moderate level of effort; SDGs 6, 11, 15 and 16 are more challenging to achieve; and SDGs 1, 2, 14 and 17 are extremely challenging to attain. The results show that companies in Turkey have different