Reports progress in the development of the Needsort, a research tool, for the assessment of the three developmentally earliest, within Maslow's framework, conative needs (physiological, safety, belongingness). Discusses item analyses, item selection methods, reliability studies, and validation studies across a broad range of populations. (Author)

Investigated the extent to which the Wechsler and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) provides items of sufficient difficulty for gifted children (N=306) aged four to six. All subtests investigated were found to have an inadequate level of difficulty, and six were inadequate for half or more of the subjects. (JAC)

In comparison with the C-test, the cloze procedure is recommended for inclusion in a student placement test battery, and as an item of greater flexibility and with application to a wider range of placement test situations. The features considered were validity, reliability, scorability, economy, administrability, practicality, and discrimination.…

To address the issues associated with testing standards, sets of context-setting variables and technical matters associated with standard-setting are presented to assist groups or committees desiring to set standards in a systematic way. (Author/CM)

Computerized adaptive testing allows us to create a unique personalized test that matches the ability and knowledge of the test taker. (Author)

Vocational and technical education researchers need to be aware of the uses and limits of various statistical models. The author reviews the Rasch Model and applies it to results from a nutrition test given to student nurses. (Author)

Using two specially constructed tests for synonyms and general knowledge, researchers examined the possibility of deciding which test items will produce expected sex-differentiated results by looking at test-item contents. They found stable sex differences but very limited possibilities of identifying the test items leading to those differences.…

Discusses the hypothesis that the difficulty of a multiple-choice comprehension test does not just depend on the difficulty of the text, but rather on the text and the questions. Presents ways to evaluate the difficulty of the text, the questions on it, and the test as a whole. (EKN)

An ignored aspect of standard setting, namely the possibility that Angoff or Nedelsky judges specify inconsistent probabilities (e.g., low probabilities for easy items but large probabilities for hard items) is explored. A latent trait method is proposed to estimate such misspecifications, and an index of consistency is defined. (Author/PN)

Three item-construction principles for multiple-choice tests were studied to determine how they affected test results for high school students: (1) use of incomplete sentence stem; (2) location of blank in the stem; and (3) presence of noncueing material. Differences in item construction had a slight effect on test results. (Authors/CJ)

Multiple matrix sampling of items and examinees was applied to an 18-item rank order instrument administered to a randomly assigned group and compared to the ordering and ranking of all items by control subjects. High correlations between ranks suggest the methodology may viably reduce respondent effort on long rank ordering tasks. (Author/CM)

Investigated cultural bias in 79 items of three verbal tests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Administered three subtests to 40 Anglo- and 40 Native-American Navajo subjects. Results indicated 15 of 79 items (information, similarities, and vocabulary subtests) were biased against the Navajo sample. (Author)

A study of recurrent faults in multiple-choice items in Britain's Open University's computer-marked tests has led to a procedure for avoiding these faults. A description of the study covers the incidence and sources of faults (obviousness, memorization, unclear instruction, ambiguity, distractors, inter-item effects, and structure) and…

This paper presents a chi square method for assessing bias in test items. In this procedure an unbiased item is defined as an item for which the probability of a correct response is the same for any person of a given ability level regardless of that person's ethnic group. (Author/CTM)

Number right and elimination scores were analyzed on a college level mathematics exam assembled from pretest data. Anxiety measures were administered along with the experimental forms to undergraduates. Results suggest that neither test scores nor attitudes are influenced by item order knowledge thereof, or anxiety level. (Author/GK)