It is common practice for assessment programs to organize qualifying sessions during which the raters (often known as "markers" or "judges") demonstrate their consistency before operational rating commences. Because of the high-stakes nature of many rating activities, the research community tends to continuously explore new…

In an attempt to resolve conflicting conclusions arising from an investigation of the validity of the claimed psychological properties of Bloom's taxonomy, the LISREL method was applied to the data of Kropp and Stoker. The simplex assumption was supported when the knowledge category is deleted from the taxonomy. (Author/RL)

A study of the effect of the number of item response categories on chi-square statistics for confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the chi-square statistic for evaluating a single-factor model is most inflated for two-category responses and becomes less inflated as the number of categories increases. (SLD)

Using several data sets, the relative performance of the beta binomial model and two more general strong true score models in estimating several indices of classification consistency is examined. It appears that the beta binomial model can provide inadequate fits to raw score distributions compared to more general models. (TJH)

The developmental trend from overall-similarity to dimensional-identity classifications is explained by a quantitative model. The model provides good qualitative fits to the extant data. Three experiments examining classifications in 120 2- to 8-year-olds and in 20 undergraduates support specific new claims of the model. (TJH)

Ways in which the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) can be used to perform some Rasch analyses are described in detail. It is shown how SPSS and a set of item calibrations can be used to estimate person abilities, standard errors of measurement, test characteristic curve, test information curve, classification consistency on a…