In standardized educational testing, test items are reused in multiple test administrations. To ensure the validity of test scores, the psychometric properties of items should remain unchanged over time. In this article, we consider the sequential monitoring of test items, in particular, the detection of abrupt changes to their psychometric…

Some applications of Bayesian decision theory to intelligent tutoring systems are considered. How the problem of adapting the appropriate amount of instruction to the changing nature of a student's capabilities during the learning process can be situated in the general framework of Bayesian decision theory is discussed in the context of the…

We consider human performance on an optimal stopping problem where people are presented with a list of numbers independently chosen from a uniform distribution. People are told how many numbers are in the list, and how they were chosen. People are then shown the numbers one at a time, and are instructed to choose the maximum, subject to the…

An approach to simultaneous optimization of assignments of subjects to treatments followed by an end-of-mastery test is presented using the framework of Bayesian decision theory. Focus is on demonstrating how rules for the simultaneous optimization of sequences of decisions can be found. The main advantages of the simultaneous approach, compared…

This paper describes two procedures for making binary classification decisions using tailored testing: the sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) and a Bayesian decision procedure. The first procedure described, the SPRT, was developed by Wald for quality control work. It has not been widely applied for testing applications because the…

The assumptions of the Criterion-Referenced Test (CRT) model proposed by Kriewall are compared to those of Emrick and Adam's Mastery-Learning (ML) model. Testing, in the context of instructional management, serves three general purposes: performance evaluation (achievement of objectives), placement (classification of students for instruction), and…

Comments are made on the review papers presented by six Dutch psychometricians: Ivo Molenaar, Wim van der Linden, Ed Roskam, Arnold Van den Wollenberg, Gideon Mellenbergh, and Dato de Gruijter. Molenaar has embraced a pragmatic viewpoint on Bayesian methods, using both empirical and pure approaches to solve educational research problems. Molenaar…