There has long been the suspicion amongst staff in Art & Design that the ratings given to their subject disciplines in the UK's National Student Survey are adversely affected by a combination of circumstances--a "perfect storm". The "perfect storm" proposition is tested by comparing ratings for Art & Design with those…

Psychometric practice does not always converge with the advances of psychometric theory. In order to investigate this gap, the authors focus on the 10 most used psychological tests in Europe, as identified by recent surveys. The article analyzes test manuals published in 6 different European countries for these 10 most used tests. A total of 32…

A latent class model for rating data is presented which provides an alternative to the latent trait approach of analyzing test data. It is the analog of Andrich's binomial Rasch model for Lazarsfeld's latent class analysis (LCA). Response probabilities for rating categories follow a binomial distribution and depend on class-specific item…

DICOT, a computer program for the Rasch analysis of classroom tests, is described. Results are presented in a self-explanatory form. Person ability and item difficulty estimates are expressed in a familiar metric. Person and item fit statistics provide a diagnosis of individual children and identification of problematic items. (Author/DWH)

On the basis of the characteristics of criterion-referenced tests, the contribution of German research to the development and application of criterion-referenced tests is discussed. (PN)

A method is proposed for providing an absolute, in contrast to comparative, evaluation of how well two tests are equated by transforming their raw scores into a particular common scale. The method is direct, not requiring creation of a standard for comparison; expresses its results in scaled rather than raw scores, and allows examination of the…

The literature on criterion referenced testing is full of discussions concerning whether classical measurement techniques are appropriate, whether variance is necessary, whether new indices of reliability are needed, and the like. What appears to be lacking, however, is a clear and simple discussion of why the problems occur. This paper suggests…

This text was written to help the reader acquire a base of knowledge about classical psychometrics and to integrate new ideas into that framework of knowledge. The material is organized into five units: (1) introduction to measurement theory; (2) reliability; (3) validity; (4) item analysis in test development; and (5) test scoring and…

Under given conditions, conventional testing and computer-generated repeatable testing (CGRT) are equally effective for estimating examinee ability; CGRT is more effective for estimating the mean ability level of a group and less effective for estimating ability differences among individuals. These conclusion are drawn from domain-referenced test…

Prompted by the increased use of behavior rating instruments in educational environments and evidence of confusion over the interpretation of labels designating behavior clusters, the present two-phase study analyzed 410 specific items contained in seven behavior rating instruments and investigated whether these items could be intuitively sorted…

This study examined agreement rates between identified strengths and weaknesses in shared abilities and influences on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Sixty-seven students in the first through seventh grades referred for learning disabilities (LD) evaluation were…

This book offers specific how-to advice to college faculty on every stage of the testing process, including planning the test and classifying objectives to be measured, ensuring the validity and reliability of the test, and grading in such a way as to arrive at fair grades based on relevant data. The book examines the strengths and weaknesses of…

The existence of criterion-referenced (CR) measurement is questioned in this paper. Despite beliefs that differences exist between two alternative forms of measurement, CR and Norm Referenced (NR), an analysis of philosophical and psychological descriptions of measurement, as well as a growing number of empirical studies, reveal that the common…

The family of Weibull distributions was investigated as a model for the distributions of response times for items in computer-based criterion-referenced tests. The fit of these distributions were, with a few exceptions, good to excellent according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For a few relatively simple items, the two-parameter gamma…

Three approaches to the construction of achievement tests are compared: construct, operational, and empirical. The construct approach is based upon classical test theory and measures an abstract representation of the instructional objectives. The operational approach specifies instructional intent through instructional objectives, facet design,…