In many educational settings, students may have an incentive to take courses where high grades are easier to achieve, potentially corroding student learning, evaluation of student achievement, and the fairness and efficiency of post-graduation labor outcomes. A grading system that takes into account heterogeneity of teacher standards and student…

Standardized tests have been increasingly controversial over recent years in high-stakes admission decisions. Their role in operationalizing definitions of merit and qualification is especially contested, but in law schools this challenge has become particularly intense. Law schools have relied on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and an INDEX…

In measurement research, data simulations are a commonly used analytical technique. While simulation designs have many benefits, it is unclear if these artificially generated datasets are able to accurately capture real examinee item response behaviors. This potential lack of comparability may have important implications for administration of…

In test assembly, a fundamental difference exists between algorithms that select a test sequentially or simultaneously. Sequential assembly allows us to optimize an objective function at the examinee's ability estimate, such as the test information function in computerized adaptive testing. But it leads to the non-trivial problem of how to realize…

A study was conducted to examine patterns of test preparation for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) during the 1990-1991 testing year. This represented an extension of an earlier study that examined self-report test preparation methods for the June and October 1989 test administrations. In this study, five types of analysis were performed: (1)…

The fair and accurate treatment of multiple test scores for law school applicants who take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) more than one time is the focus of this study. The study reexamines the differential validity and predictive accuracy of the different test scores that are presented by repeat test takers. The study includes U.S. law…

Speededness refers to the extent to which time limits affect test takers' performance. With regard to the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), speededness is currently measured by calculating the proportion of test takers who do not reach each item on the test. These proportions typically increase slightly toward the end of the test, indicating that…

Advocates for a more inclusive legal profession are worried about the recent decline in enrollment of Black students in law school. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), Blacks were 7.4 percent of all law students in 1994. By 2005, that percentage had fallen to just 6.6. Several law journal articles have suggested that the schools…

This study investigated the overall prevalence of discrepant Law School Admission Test (LSAT) subscores, their differential incidence for subgroups of examinees, and the psychometric properties of alternative measures of discrepant performance. The sample consisted of 39,350 examinees who took the LSAT in December 1991. Subscore differences, often…

Item-exposure control in computerized adaptive testing is implemented by imposing item-ineligibility constraints on the assembly process of the shadow tests. The method resembles Sympson and Hetter's (1985) method of item-exposure control in that the decisions to impose the constraints are probabilistic. The method does not, however, require…

This study, a partial replication of an earlier study by B. Pitcher (1977), examined the validity of using initial, most recent, highest, and average scores in decisions about repeat takers of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). The study included only schools that enrolled 50 or more first-year students who had taken the LSAT on more than 1…

Analysis of the 1991 Law School Admission Test (LSAT) shows that the testlet structure of the reading comprehension and analytic reasoning sections has a significant effect on the statistical characteristics of the test. The testlet-based reliability of these two sections is lower than had been previously calculated. (SLD)

The purpose of this study was to examine empirical Type I error rates and rejection rates for three dimensionality assessment procedures with data sets simulated to reflect short tests and small samples. The TESTFACT G superscript 2 difference test suffered from an inflated Type I error rate with unidimensional data sets, while the approximate chi…

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) was examined to see if the items on a form could be divided into different subgroups in which items looked statistically similar within the subgroups but statistically different between subgroups. Of such subgrouping can be detected, it is likely that the subgroups of items measure different abilities, and the…