An alternative item-selection procedure for use with Owen's Bayesian adaptive testing strategy is proposed. This procedure is, by design, faster than Owen's original procedure because it searches only part of the total item pool. Item selections are, however, identical for both methods. After a conceptual development of the rapid-search procedure,…

A functional design model for a computerized adaptive testing (CAT) system was developed and presented through a series of hierarchy plus input-process-output (HIPO) diagrams. System functions were translated into system structure: specifically, into 34 software components. Implementation of the design in a physical system was addressed through…

Tailored testing increases the efficiency of tests by individually selecting for each person a set of items from an item pool so that the difficulty of the items selected will be such as to maximize the information provided by the score. The tailored testing procedure designed by Cliff orders persons and items on a common ordinal scale and…

INTERTAIL, the computer program which implements an approach to tailored testing outlined by Cliff (1975), was examined with errorless data in several Monte Carlo studies. Three replications of each cell of a 3 x 3 table with 10, 20 and 40 items and persons were analyzed. Mean rank correlation coefficients between the true order, specified by…

The reliability and validity of a tailored testing procedure based on the simple logistic model was determined for an achievement test in statistics and measurement. The test was administered on a CRT terminal to students from graduate and undergraduate measurement courses. Equivalent form reliability over a one-week interval was found to be 0.595…

This report describes an automated system for administering, scoring, and recording results of multiple-choice tests. The system consists of examinee station, proctor station, and central computer; the report describes the equipment and the programing characteristics of the respective components. The system is designed for tests tailored to the…

A computerized adaptive testing model was assessed in a technical training system. The model, a modification of Lord's flexilevel paradigm, consisted of: the sequencing of test items in a difficulty hierarchy, adaptive entry of students into the test at a difficulty level appropriate to their predicted score, and systematic movement of students…

The Rasch model for test analysis is described and compared with two-parameter and three-parameter latent-trait models. Conditional maximum likelihood equations for estimating item parameters are derived, and estimates of person parameters are described together with their confidence intervals. Goodness of fit tests are discussed, including a…

Simulated tailored tests were used to investigate the relationships between characteristics of the item pool and the computer program, and the reliability and bias of the resulting ability estimates. The computer program was varied to provide for various step sizes (differences in difficulty between successive steps) and different acceptance…

TAILOR is a computer program that uses the implied orders concept as the basis for computerized adaptive testing. The basic characteristics of TAILOR, which does not involve pretesting, are reviewed here and two studies of it are reported. One is a Monte Carlo simulation based on the four-parameter Birnbaum model and the other uses a matrix of…

Latent trait theory supposes that, in testing situations, examinee performance on a test can be predicted (or explained) by defining examinee characteristics, referred to as traits, estimating scores for examinees on these traits and using the scores to predict or explain test performance (Lord and Novick, 1968). In view of the breakthroughs in…