Item options of shortened forms of the Graduate Record Examination Verbal and Quantitative tests were empirically weighted by two variants of a method originally attributed to Guttman. The first method assigned to each option of an item the mean standard score on the remaining items of all subjects choosing that option. The second procedure…

The present study suggests that although the reliability of an academic aptitude test given under formula-score condition can be increased substantially through empirical option weighting, much of the increase is due to the capitalization of the keying procedure on omitting tendencies which are reliable but not valid. (Author)

Evidence on how the psychometric properties of verbal and quantitative academic aptitude tests are affected when item options are weighted using rather simple conceptual procedures is presented. This is discussed in connection with the scoring methods used on the Graduate Record Examinations. (DG)