This study examined the effectiveness of the Sympson and Hetter conditional procedure (SHC), a modification of the Sympson and Hetter (1985) algorithm, in controlling the exposure rates of items in a computerized adaptive testing (CAT) environment. The properties of the procedure were compared with those of the Davey and Parshall (1995) and the…

Item selection methods in computerized adaptive testing (CAT) can yield extremely skewed item exposure distribution in which items with high "a" values may be over-exposed while those with low "a" values may never be selected. H. Chang and Z. Ying (1999) proposed the a-stratified design (ASTR) that attempts to equalize item…

Explored procedures to detect test takers using item preknowledge in computerized adaptive testing and suggested a Bayesian posterior log odds ratio index for this purpose. Simulation results support the use of the odds ratio index. (SLD)

The importance of item feedback in self-adapted testing was studied by comparing feedback and no feedback conditions for computerized adaptive tests and self-adapted tests taken by 363 college students. Results indicate that item feedback is not necessary to realize score differences between self-adapted and computerized adaptive testing. (SLD)

Studied the impact of using five different exposure control algorithms in two sizes of item pool calibrated using the generalized partial credit model. Simulation results show that the a-stratified design, in comparison to a no-exposure control condition, could be used to reduce item exposure and overlap and increase pool use, while degrading…

Compared the nominal and empirical null distributions of the standardized log-likelihood statistic for polytomous items for paper-and-pencil (P&P) and computerized adaptive tests (CATs). Results show that the empirical distribution of the statistic differed from the assumed standard normal distribution for both P&P tests and CATs. Also…

Demonstrates mathematically that if every item in an item pool has an equal possibility to be selected from the pool in a fixed-length computerized adaptive test, the number of overlapping items among an alpha randomly sampled examinees follows the hypergeometric distribution family for alpha greater than or equal to 1. (SLD)

Polytomous item response theory models and the research that has been conducted to investigate a variety of possible operational procedures for polytomous model-based computerized adaptive testing (CAT) are reviewed, along with studies comparing polytomous CAT systems with competing item response theory models. (SLD)

Proposes two new methods for item-exposure control, the Progressive method and the Restricted Maximum Information method. Compares both methods with six other item-selection methods. Discusses advantages of the two new methods and the usefulness of combining them. (SLD)

Summarizes the benefits of computerized assessment and provides a review of some practical issues concerning measurement, item and examinee characteristics, hardware, and software. Adequate measures of reliability and validity have been established for many computer-based tests, and the benefits of computer testing have been realized in applied…

Compared five item selection rules with respect to the efficiency and precision of trait (theta) estimation at the early stages of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). The Fisher interval information, Fisher information with a posterior distribution, Kullback-Leibler information, and Kullback-Leibler information with a posterior distribution…

Provides an overview of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) and introduces contributions to this special issue. CAT elements discussed include item selection, estimation of the latent trait, item exposure, measurement precision, and item-bank development. (SLD)

The second edition of "Computerized Adaptive Testing" contains new materials related to: (1) chapter 2, system design; (2) chapter 4, item response theory, item calibration, and proficiency estimation; and (3) chapter 10, caveats, pitfalls, and unexpected consequences. The book raises critical computerized adaptive testing research and application…

Computer-based testing by credentialing agencies has become common; however, selecting a test design is difficult because several good ones are available - parallel forms, computer adaptive (CAT), and multistage (MST). In this study, three computer-based test designs under some common examination conditions were investigated. Item bank size and…

Item-exposure control in computerized adaptive testing is implemented by imposing item-ineligibility constraints on the assembly process of the shadow tests. The method resembles Sympson and Hetter's (1985) method of item-exposure control in that the decisions to impose the constraints are probabilistic. The method does not, however, require…