Student responses to the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST) 2 Online Writing Assessment are scored by a computer-scoring engine. The scoring method is not widely understood among educators, and there exists a misperception that it is not comparable to hand scoring. To address these issues, the West Virginia Department of Education…

In this technical report, we describe the results of a study of mathematics items written to align with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in grades 6-8. In each grade, CCSS items were organized into forms, and the reliability of these forms was evaluated along with an experimental form including items aligned with the National Council of…

This study investigated the relationships between when a test is administered and the amount of test-taking effort exhibited by examinees. Three time-related variables were investigated: the time of year the test was administered, the day of the week the test event occurred, and the time of day that the test event occurred. Mean effort did not…

In this study, we describe the development of rapid reading measures, sentences presented to students in a nearly subliminal manner, with a literal comprehension question asked following their removal. After administering alternate forms of these measures to students, we present the results from three statistical analyses to ascertain their…

Classical test theory is based on the concept of a true score for each examinee, defined as the expected or average score across an infinite number of repeated parallel tests. In most cases, there is only a score from a single administration of the test in question. The difference between this single observed score and the underlying true score is…

This study extended prior Law School Admission Council (LSAC) research related to the item response theory (IRT) local item independence assumption into the realm of classical test theory. Initially, results from the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and two other tests were investigated to determine the approximate state of local item independence…

Examines the question of whether cultural and ethnic groups differ in their extreme response style. Studies questionnaire responses of Hispanic and non-Hispanic male Navy recruits and suggests that differences in extreme response style may be attributable to differences in judgment style across the two cultural groups. (MW)

Person fit in the Rasch one parameter model is investigated. The first set of data deals with grade 3 students responding to the mathematics computation and reading vocabulary subscales of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills Forms (CTBS/S). The second set of data deals with grade 3 students responding to the Basic Skills Assessment Program…

Six new forms of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) were developed. These new forms were equated to a standard reference test, ASVAB 8a, using normative data based on a 1980 weighted probability sample of American youth, ages 18-23. Equating allows the services to report the distributions of examinee ability on a common metric or…

This paper reports a second-cycle validation study of the test of English at Matriculation (TEAM) following revisions made to the test in 1993. Candidates' scores from four academic sessions (1993-1997) were used to assess the relationship between the performance at the beginning of their degree course and their eventual academic outcome. Results…