This article proposes that sampling design effects have potentially huge unrecognized impacts on the results reported by large-scale district and state assessments in the United States. When design effects are unrecognized and unaccounted for they lead to underestimating the sampling error in item and test statistics. Underestimating the sampling…

In the attempt to identify or prevent unfair tests, both quantitative analyses and logical evaluation are often used. For the most part, fairness evaluation is a pragmatic attempt at determining whether procedural or substantive due process has been accorded to either a group of test takers or an individual. In both the individual and comparative…

While measurement precision is relatively easy to establish for single tests and assessments, it is much more difficult to determine for decision making with multiple tests on different subjects. This latter is the situation in the system of final examinations for secondary education in the Netherlands and is used as an example in this paper. This…

The literature on item bias, i.e., the question of whether some items in tests favor one cultural group over another cultural group due to irrelevant factors, is reviewed and evaluated. All known references through 1981 are described including a large number of unpublished reports. Each method is described and the criticisms that have appeared in…

Two studies are presented in this report. The first is titled "Empirical Studies of Multilevel Approaches to Test Development and Interpretation: Measuring Between-Group Differences in Instruction." Because of a belief that schooling does affect student achievement, researchers have questioned the empirical and measurement techniques…

A procedure for in-depth analysis of a limited number of tests being considered for selection by a school, district, project, or state personnel is described. This procedure involves listing the objectives that it would be desirable to measure determining the relative importance of each of these objectives, having "judges" match test items to…

Description of an objective method for assigning weights to questions on examinations includes discussions of classical test theory, knowledge organization, and how task analysis can be used to identify knowledge elements required to solve specific problems, rank them, and assign objective weights to exam questions using a Pareto distribution (7…

Instructional programs organized according to modern educational technology are discussed within the purposes of criterion-referenced measurements used. The problems of criterion-referenced measurements include scoring and score interpretation, item and test analysis, and mastery testing. An overview of solutions and approaches to the problems and…

In circumstances where judges are required to make ratings of performance, it is usually required to have two or more raters who are trained to agree on independent ratings of the same performance. It is suggested that such a requirement may produce the paradox of attenuation associated with item analysis, in which too high a correlation between…

Issues in preparing a review form to detect item bias in tests are discussed and the first draft of an item bias review form is presented. While stereotyping is the consistent representation of a given group in a particular light, bias is the presence of some characteristic of an item that results in differential performance of two individuals of…

This study explores the use of the modified caution index (MCI) for identifying judges whose patterns of recommendations suggest that their judgments might be based on incomplete information, flawed reasoning, or inattention to their standard-setting tasks. It also examines the effect on test standards and passing rates when the test standards of…