Examination scores obtained by students from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), and National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB) may not be directly comparable due to differences in examination administration, item characteristics of the subject in question, and student abilities. For more accurate comparisons, scores…

In the context of examinations, the phrase "maintaining standards" usually refers to any activity designed to ensure that it is no easier (or harder) to achieve a given grade in one year than in another. Specifically, it tends to mean activities associated with setting examination grade boundaries. Benton et al (2020) describes a method…

The choice of anchor tests is crucial in applications of the nonequivalent groups with anchor test design of equating. Sinharay and Holland (2006, 2007) suggested "miditests," which are anchor tests that are content-representative and have the same mean item difficulty as the total test but have a smaller spread of item difficulties.…

The main purpose of this study is to compare the test forms to the midi anchor test and the mini anchor test performance based on item response theory. The research was conducted with using simulated data which were generated based on Rasch model. In order to equate two test forms the anchor item nonequivalent groups (internal anchor test) was…

In this study, equating methods for random group design using small samples through factors such as sample size, difference in difficulty between forms, and guessing parameter was aimed for comparison. Moreover, which method gives better results under which conditions was also investigated. In this study, 5,000 dichotomous simulated data…

The equating performance of two internal anchor test structures--miditests and minitests--is studied for four IRT equating methods using simulated data. Originally proposed by Sinharay and Holland, miditests are anchors that have the same mean difficulty as the overall test but less variance in item difficulties. Four popular IRT equating methods…

The purpose of this study is to equate Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) mathematics subtest scores obtained from TIMSS 2011 to scores obtained from TIMSS 2007 form with different nonlinear observed score equating methods under Non-Equivalent Anchor Test (NEAT) design where common items are used to link two or more test…

This explorative-descriptive study set out to examine the equivalence among Test of English Proficiency (TOEP) forms, developed by the Indonesian Testing Service Centre (ITSC) and co-founded by The Association for The Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN) and The Association of Psychology in Indonesia. Using a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential impact of misrouting under a 2-stage multistage test (MST) design, which includes 1 routing and 3 second-stage modules. Simulations were used to create a situation in which a large group of examinees took each of the 3 possible MST paths (high, middle, and low). We compared differences in…

The purpose of this research was to compare the equating performance of various equating procedures for the multidimensional tests. To examine the various equating procedures, simulated data sets were used that were generated based on a multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) framework. Various equating procedures were examined, including…

The Non-Equivalent groups with Anchor Test equating (NEAT) design is a widely used equating design in large scale testing that involves two groups that do not have to be of equal ability. One group P gets form X and a group of items A and the other group Q gets form Y and the same group of items A. One of the most commonly used equating methods in…

Small sample equating remains a largely unexplored area of research. This study attempts to fill in some of the research gaps via a large-scale, IRT-based simulation study that evaluates the performance of seven small-sample equating methods under various test characteristic and sampling conditions. The equating methods considered are typically…

The population sensitivity of vertical scaling results was evaluated for a state reading assessment spanning grades 3-10 and a state mathematics test spanning grades 3-8. Subpopulations considered included males and females. The 3-parameter logistic model was used to calibrate math and reading items and a common item design was used to construct…

The most critical feature of a common-item nonequivalent groups equating design is that the average score difference between the new and old groups can be accurately decomposed into a group ability difference and a form difficulty difference. Two widely used observed-score linear equating methods, the Tucker and the Levine observed-score methods,…

This study examined variations of a nonequivalent groups equating design used with constructed-response (CR) tests to determine which design was most effective in producing equivalent scores across the two tests to be equated. Using data from a large-scale exam, the study investigated the use of anchor CR item rescoring in the context of classical…