Alternate forms of the state anxiety (A-State) and trait anxiety (A-Trait) scales of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were constructed by dividing the 20 items of each scale into two briefer forms having 10 items each. The alternate forms and item statistics are presented. (Author/BW)

This paper provides analytic evaluations of expected (marginal) true-score measures for binary items given their item response theory (IRT) calibration. Under the assumption of normal trait distributions, marginalized true scores, error variance, true score variance, and reliability for norm-referenced and criterion-references interpretations are…

This module explains test review as it is now performed in most large-scale testing programs. It addresses the fundamental aspects of item review principally for fairness, sensitivity, and bias, and to a lesser degree for content and construct validity. The module is designed for a survey course and thus has a broad, rather than deep, focus. The…

This paper presents an approach to item pool design that has the potential to improve on the quality of current item pools in educational and psychological testing and thus to increase both measurement precision and validity. The approach consists of the application of mathematical programming techniques to calculate optimal blueprints for item…

Several methods have been developed for use on constrained adaptive testing. Item pool partitioning, multistage testing, and testlet-based adaptive testing are methods that perform well for specific cases of adaptive testing. The weighted deviation model and the Shadow Test approach can be more generally applied. These methods are based on…

Preventing items in adaptive testing from being over- or underexposed is one of the main problems in computerized adaptive testing. Though the problem of overexposed items can be solved using a probabilistic item-exposure control method, such methods are unable to deal with the problem of underexposed items. Using a system of rotating item pools,…

This paper presents results from a preliminary investigation in which researchers manipulated the cover story of an open-ended assessment that required students to design an experiment. Participants were 27 sixth graders from a culturally diverse urban school. In one version of the cover story, students were asked to design an experiment to test a…

The Microsoft Certification Program (MCP) includes many new computer-based item types, based on complex cases involving the Windows 2000 (registered) operating system. This Innovative Item Technology (IIT) has presented challenges beyond traditional psychometric considerations such as capturing and storing the relevant response data from…

Several nonparametric dimensionality assessment tools have demonstrated the usefulness of item pair conditional covariances as building blocks for investigating multidimensional test structure. Recently, J. Zhang and W. Stout (1999) have related the structural properties of conditional covariances in a generalized compensatory framework to a test…

Automated test assembly is a technology for producing multiple, equivalent test forms from an item pool. An important consideration for test security in automated test assembly is the inclusion of the same items on these multiple forms. Although it is possible to use item selection as a formal constraint in assembling forms, the number of…

This report contains a review of procedures for computerized assembly of linear, sequential, and adaptive tests. The common approach to these test assembly problems is to view them as instances of constrained combinatorial optimization. For each testing format, several potentially useful objective functions and types of constraints are discussed.…

The requirement of large sample sizes for calibrating items based on item response theory (IRT) models is not easily met in many practical pretesting situations. Although classical item statistics could be estimated with much smaller samples, the values may not be comparable across different groups of examinees. This study extended the authors'…

To satisfy the security requirements of computerized adaptive tests (CATs), efforts have been made to control the exposure rates of optimal items directly by incorporating statistical methods into the item selection procedure. Since differences are likely to occur between the exposure control parameter derivation stage and the operational CAT…

This report shares with educators and the public all of the test items on which spring 2002 student results from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) are based. The release of these items provides information on the kinds of knowledge and skills students are expected to demonstrate on the MCAS tests. Local educators are…

This study compared classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT). The behavior of the item and person statistics derived from these two measurement frameworks was examined analytically and empirically using a data set obtained from BILOG (R. Mislay and D. Block, 1997). The example was a 15-item test with a sample size of 600…