Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) is a widely used tool for data management analysis across a variety of fields. The procedure for item response theory (PROC IRT) is one to perform unidimensional and multidimensional item response theory (IRT) analysis for dichotomous and polytomous data. This review provides a summary of the features of PROC…

This article discusses visual techniques for detecting test items that would be optimal to be selected to the final compilation on the one hand and, on the other hand, to out-select those items that would lower the quality of the compilation. Some classic visual tools are discussed, first, in a practical manner in diagnosing the logical,…

Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are widely used in educational assessments and professional certification exams. Managing large repositories of MCQs, however, poses several challenges due to the high volume of questions and the need to maintain their quality and relevance over time. One of these challenges is the presence of questions that…

Educational assessments often require uniform test forms, for which each test form has equivalent measurement accuracy but with a different set of items. For uniform test assembly, an important issue is the increase of the number of assembled uniform tests. Although many automatic uniform test assembly methods exist, the maximum clique algorithm…

Online assessment is an essential part of online education, and if conducted properly, has been found to effectively gauge student learning. Generally, textbased questions have been the cornerstone of online assessment. Recently, however, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence has added a significant challenge to the integrity of…

Classical approach to test theory has been the foundation for educational and psychological measurement for over 90 years. This approach concerns with measurement error and hence test reliability, which in part relies on individual test items. The CTT package, developed in light of this, provides functions for test- and item-level analyses of…

Researchers in many disciplines work with ranking data. This data type is unique in that it is often deterministic in nature (the ranks of items "k"-1 determine the rank of item "k"), and the difference in a pair of rank scores separated by "k" units is equivalent regardless of the actual values of the two ranks in…

This article outlines a procedure for examining the degree to which a common factor may be dominating additional factors in a multicomponent measuring instrument consisting of binary items. The procedure rests on an application of the latent variable modeling methodology and accounts for the discrete nature of the manifest indicators. The method…

This article aims to provide a theoretical framework for computerized adaptive tests (CAT) and item response theory models for polytomous items. Besides that, it aims to introduce the simulation and live CAT software to the related researchers. Computerized adaptive test algorithm, assumptions of item response theory models, nominal response…

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) is a long-standing international assessment of mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades that has been collecting trend data every four years since 1995. About 70 countries use TIMSS trend data for monitoring the effectiveness of their education systems in a global…

In online educational systems we can easily collect and analyze extensive data about student learning. Current practice, however, focuses only on some aspects of these data, particularly on correctness of students answers. When a student answers incorrectly, the submitted wrong answer can give us valuable information. We provide an overview of…

A directly applicable latent variable modeling procedure for classical item analysis is outlined. The method allows one to point and interval estimate item difficulty, item correlations, and item-total correlations for composites consisting of categorical items. The approach is readily employed in empirical research and as a by-product permits…

To rule out the need for a two-parameter item response theory (IRT) model during item analysis by Rasch models, it is important to check the Rasch model's assumption that all items have the same item discrimination. Biserial and polyserial correlation coefficients measuring the association between items and restscores are often used in an informal…

This article discusses the ResidPlots-2, a computer software that provides a powerful tool for IRT graphical residual analyses. ResidPlots-2 consists of two components: a component for computing residual statistics and another component for communicating with users and for plotting the residual graphs. The features of the ResidPlots-2 software are…

This article describes SIMREL, a software program designed for the simulation of alpha coefficients and the estimation of its confidence intervals. SIMREL runs on two alternatives. In the first one, if SIMREL is run for a single data file, it performs descriptive statistics, principal components analysis, and variance analysis of the item scores…