Criteria had been proposed for assessing the severity of possible test security violations for computerized tests with high-stakes outcomes. However, these criteria resulted from theoretical derivations that assumed uniformly randomized item selection. This study investigated potential damage caused by organized item theft in computerized adaptive…

Content balancing is an important issue in the design and implementation of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Content-balancing techniques that have been applied in fixed content balancing, where the number of items from each content area is fixed, include constrained CAT (CCAT), the modified multinomial model (MMM), modified constrained CAT…

In addition to its precision superiority over nonadaptive tests, another known advantage of computerized adaptive tests (CATs) is that they can be offered on a continuous basis. This is advantageous to examinees in terms of flexibility of test scheduling, as well as advantageous to schools and other testing centers in terms of both space and…

Chang and Zhang (2002, 2003) proposed several baseline criteria for assessing the severity of possible test security violations for computerized tests with high-stakes outcomes. However, these criteria were obtained from theoretical derivations that assumed uniformly randomized item selection. The current study investigated potential damage caused…

This study developed a model to simulate nonmodel-fitting responses in a computerized adaptive testing (CAT) environment, and to examine the effectiveness of the model. The underlying idea was to simulate examinees' test behaviors realistically. This study simulated a situation in which examinees are exposed to or are coached on test items before…

The purpose of this study was to compare and evaluate five online pretest item calibration/scaling methods in computerized adaptive testing (CAT): (1) the marginal maximum likelihood estimate with one-EM cycle (OEM); (2) the marginal maximum likelihood estimate with multiple EM cycles (MEM); (3) Stocking's Method A (M. Stocking, 1988); (4)…

Error indices (bias, standard error of estimation, and root mean square error) obtained on different scales of measurement under different test termination rules in a computerized adaptive test (CAT) context were examined. Four ability estimation methods were studied: (1) maximum likelihood estimation (MLE); (2) weighted likelihood estimation…

The purpose of this study was to compare and evaluate three online pretest item calibration/scaling methods in terms of item parameter recovery when the item responses to the pretest items in the pool would be sparse. The three methods considered were the marginal maximum likelihood estimate with one EM cycle (OEM) method, the marginal maximum…