Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of domestic data from the" GRE"® revised General Test, introduced in 2011, were conducted separately for the verbal (VBL) and quantitative (QNT) reasoning measures to evaluate the unidimensionality and local independence assumptions required by item response theory (IRT). Results based on data…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the extent to which item response theory (IRT) proficiency estimation methods are robust to the presence of aberrant responses under the "GRE"® General Test multistage adaptive testing (MST) design. To that end, a wide range of atypical response behaviors affecting as much as 10% of the test items…

Both theoretical and practical considerations have led the revision of the Graduate Record Examinations® (GRE®) revised General Test, here called the rGRE, to adopt a multistage adaptive design that will be continuously or nearly continuously administered and that can provide immediate score reporting. These circumstances sharply constrain the…

Research on examinees' response changes on multiple-choice tests over the past 80 years has yielded some consistent findings, including that most examinees make score gains by changing answers. This study expands the research on response changes by focusing on a high-stakes admissions test--the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning measures…

In many testing programs it is assumed that the context or position in which an item is administered does not have a differential effect on examinee responses to the item. Violations of this assumption may bias item response theory estimates of item and person parameters. This study examines the potentially biasing effects of item position. A…

Views on testing--its purpose and uses and how its data are analyzed--are related to one's perspective on test takers. Test takers can be viewed as learners, examinees, or contestants. I briefly discuss the perspective of test takers as learners. I maintain that much of psychometrics views test takers as examinees. I discuss test takers as a…

Both testlet design and hierarchical latent traits are fairly common in educational and psychological measurements. This study aimed to develop a new class of higher order testlet response models that consider both local item dependence within testlets and a hierarchy of latent traits. Due to high dimensionality, the authors adopted the Bayesian…

Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) has unsurpassable advantages over traditional testing. It has become the mainstream in large scale examinations in modern society. This paper gives a brief introduction to CAT including differences between traditional testing and CAT, the principles of CAT, psychometric theory and computer algorithms of CAT, the…

This paper synthesizes ideas from the fields of graphical modeling and education testing, particularly item response theory (IRT) applied to computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Graphical modeling can offer IRT a language for describing multifaceted skills and knowledge, and disentangling evidence from complex performances. IRT-CAT can offer…

The extensive computer simulation work done in developing the computer adaptive versions of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Board General Test and the College Board Admissions Testing Program (ATP) Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is described in this report. Both the GRE General and SAT computer adaptive tests (CATs), which are fixed length…

Time limits on tests often prevent some examinees from finishing all of the items on the test; the extent of this effect has been called the "speededness" of the test. Traditional speededness indices focus on the number of unreached items. Other examinees in the same situation rapidly fill in answers in the hope of getting some of the…

This report contains results of a field test conducted to determine the relationship between a Graduate Records Examination (GRE) linear computer-based test (CBT) and a paper-and-pencil (P&P) test with the same items. Recent GRE examinees participated in the field test by taking either a CBT or the P&P test. Data from the field test…