In order to ensure content validity by covering a broad range of content domains, the testing times of some educational large-scale assessments last up to a total of two hours or more. Performance decline over the course of taking the test has been extensively documented in the literature. It can occur due to increases in the numbers of: (a)…

Administrative problems such as computer malfunction and power outage occasionally lead to missing item scores and hence to incomplete data on mastery tests such as the AP and U.S. Medical Licensing examinations. Investigators are often interested in estimating the probabilities of passing of the examinees with incomplete data on mastery tests.…

In investigations of unusual testing behavior, a common question is whether a specific pattern of responses occurs unusually often within a group of examinees. In many current tests, modern communication techniques can permit quite large numbers of examinees to share keys, or common response patterns, to the entire test. To address this issue,…

Making causal inferences from a quasi-experiment is difficult. Sensitivity analysis approaches to address hidden selection bias thus have gained popularity. This study serves as an introduction to a simple but practical form of sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation procedures. We examine estimated treatment effects for a school-based…

With an increase in the number of online tests, interruptions during testing due to unexpected technical issues seem unavoidable. For example, interruptions occurred during several recent state tests. When interruptions occur, it is important to determine the extent of their impact on the examinees' scores. There is a lack of research on this…

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…

Rasch proposed an exact conditional inference approach to testing his model but never implemented it because it involves the calculation of a complicated probability. This paper furthers Rasch's approach by (1) providing an efficient Monte Carlo methodology for accurately approximating the required probability and (2) illustrating the usefulness…

The relationship between true ability (operationally defined as the number of items for which the examinee actually knew the correct answer) and the effects of guessing upon observed test variance was investigated. Three basic hypotheses were treated mathematically: there is no functional relationship between true ability and guessing success;…

Research supported by the U.S. Office of Education, Contract OEC-6-10-239.

Three separate papers are included in this report. The first describes a two-stage procedure for choosing from among several instructional programs the one which maximizes the probability of passing the test. The second gives the exact sample sizes required to determine whether a squared multiple correlation coefficient is above or below a known…

A problem of considerable importance in certain educational settings is determining how many items to include on a mastery test. Applying ranking and selection procedures, a solution is given which includes as a special case all existing single-stage, non-Bayesian solutions based on a strong true-score model. (Author/JKS)

Models proposed by Cleary, Thorndike, Cole, Linn, Einhorn and Bass, Darlington, and Gross and Su for analyzing bias in the use of tests in a selection strategy are surveyed. Several additional models are also introduced. The purpose is to describe, compare, contrast, and evaluate these models while extracting such useful ideas as may be found in…

Confirms that in cloze testing, it is unnecessary to use standard size spaces and reveals a high correlation between synonymic scoring and verbatim scoring. Indicates also that a specific probability concepts test is comprehensible and readable by the great majority of students for whom it was devised. (FL)

The present study was an attempt to alleviate some of the difficulties inherent in multiple-choice items by having examinees respond to multiple-choice items in a probabilistic manner. Using this format, examinees are able to respond to each alternative and to provide indications of any partial knowledge they may possess concerning the item. The…