The relationship between characteristics of test takers and characteristics of test items was examined in a quasiexperimental study involving 301 high school juniors and sophomores taking a mathematics examination that was consequential to sophomores but not juniors. Results are interpreted in relation to the expectancy value model of motivation.…

Reports on a battery of oral language and early literacy tests, called the SHELL. Describes the tests, presents tasks and scoring system, and provides information about performance by participants in the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development. Descriptive, correlational, and predictive analyses based on SHELL-K (kindergarten) and…

This article reports the results of using a three-layer back propagation artificial neural network to predict item difficulty in a reading comprehension test. Three classes of variables were examined: text structure, propositional analysis, and cognitive demand. Results demonstrate that the networks can consistently predict item difficulty. (JL)

Test-taking strategies that examinees may use without reading the passages on which reading comprehension questions are based, similar to those of the new Scholastic Assessment Test, were studied with 350 high school juniors. Strategies most often used involved choosing answers based on consistency and reconstructing main themes from other…

The extent to which items from the Test of English as a Foreign Language and the First Certificate in English function differently for test-takers of equal ability from different native language and curricular backgrounds was investigated. Results suggest a need for methods like logistic regression to examine nonuniform differential item…

Several analyses are presented on the relationships among the Test of Spoken English, Test of Written English, and Test of English as a Foreign Language. The multivariate prediction of each test from the scores on the others is very accurate; variances with two prominent factors may relate to specific cognitive test-taking skills. (eight…

Findings from a study with approximately 200 first-year University of Calgary (Canada) nursing students provide evidence that the use of negation (e.g., not, except) should be limited in stems of multiple-choice test items and that a single-response negatively worded item should be converted to a multiple-response positively worded item. (SLD)

Reports a study investigating the utility of 52 items, selected from a readily available item pool developed for instructional purposes, when the items are used to measure critical thinking abilities of biology students. The items had reasonably good internal consistency reliability and good concurrent validity. (PR)

The PARallELogram Analysis (PARELLA) model is a probabilistic parallelogram model that can be used for the measurement of latent attitudes or latent preferences. A method is presented for testing for differential item functioning (DIF) for the PARELLA model using the approach of D. Thissen and others (1988). (SLD)

Context-dependent item sets, containing a subset of test items related to a passage or stimulus, are discussed. A brief review of methods for developing item sets reveals their potential for measuring high-level thinking. Theories and technologies for scoring item sets remain largely experimental. Research needs are discussed. (SLD)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) makes possible comparison of groups of students and provides information about what these groups know and can do. The scale anchoring techniques described in this chapter address the latter purpose. The direct method and the smoothing method of scale anchoring are discussed. (SLD)

An extension is proposed for the network algorithm introduced by C.R. Mehta and N.R. Patel to construct exact tail probabilities for testing the general hypothesis that item responses are distributed according to the Rasch model. A simulation study indicates the efficiency of the algorithm. (SLD)

A test theory using only ordinal assumptions is presented, based on the idea that the test items are a sample from a universe of items. The sum across items of the ordinal relations for a pair of persons on the universe items is analogous to a true score. (SLD)

Derivations of several item selection algorithms for use in fitting test items to target information functions (IFs) are described. These algorithms, which use an average growth approximation of target IFs, were tested by generating six test forms and were found to provide reliable fit. (SLD)

A loglinear item response theory (IRT) model is proposed that relates polytomously scored item responses to a multidimensional latent space. The analyst may specify a response function for each response, and each item may have a different number of response categories. Conditional maximum likelihood estimates are derived. (SLD)