The answer-until-correct procedure has made comparatively little impact on the field of educational testing due to the absence of a sound theoretical base for turning the response data into measures. Three new latent trait models are described. They differ in their complexity, though each is designed to yield a single parameter to measure student…

Traditionally, matching test formats have been avoided in favor of multiple-choice items for several reasons, including item analysis properties and chance performance characteristics. In the light of research on test format and anxiety, this study postulates that, if a matching test could assess knowledge for a given topic as effectively as an…

The quality of mathematics multiple choice items and their susceptibility to test wiseness were examined. Test wiseness was defined as "a subject's capacity to utilize the characteristics and formats of the test and/or test taking situation to receive a high score." The study used results of the Graduate Record Examinations Aptitude Test (GRE) and…

This document contains three papers from the Methodology Project of the Center for the Study of Evaluation. Methods for characterizing test accuracy are reported in the first two papers. "Bounds on the K Out of N Reliability of a Test, and an Exact Test for Hierarchically Related Items" describes and illustrates how an extension of a…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 100 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from test instructions, instructional magazines, encyclopedias, reference books, and children's magazines; and the accompanying answer key.…

The Home Health Assisting (HHA) program was developed specifically for use by educational agencies which offer a program in HHA upon approval granted by New York State Education Department through the Joint State Agency review and approval process. It is designed to prepare adults for work in the home under supervision of a health-care agency. A…

Recent information from established testing programs was used to investigate the nature and limitations of essay and multiple-choice tests of writing ability, the statistical relationship of these types of tests, the performance of population subgroups on each, the possible need of different disciplines for different tests of composition skill,…

Simple sum procedure of the conditional PDF approach (plausiblity of distractor function) combined with the normal approach method was applied for estimating the plausibility functions of the distractors of the Level II vocabulary subtest items of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In so doing, the normal ogive model was adopted for the correct…

Online practice tests and quizzes are commonly available to higher education students. The extent of student use of such study tools and the relationship of use to achievement, however, have not been fully investigated. One hundred twelve college students were encouraged to use optional online quizzes in preparation for proctored examinations.…

Patterns of cautiousness in a prose learning task were examined in three age groups of adults representing three levels of educational experience. Types of instruction, order of material presentation, sex, and educational experience level were varied for all groups of the 90 adults participating in the study. The main findings were as follows: (1)…

It is suggested that most standardized science tests do not adequately assess the majority of concepts taught as part of the very diversified middle school science curriculum. The 50-item Life Science Test constructed by Portland Public Schools, Maine, herein presented, aims to resolve this inadequacy. The 40-minute multiple choice test…

Two methods of interactive, computer-assisted testing methods for multiple-choice items were compared with each other and with conventional multiple-choice tests. The interactive testing methods compared were tailored testing and the respond-until-correct (RUC) item response method. In tailored testing, examinee ability is successively estimated…

This item bank was compiled by the Australian Council for Educational research (ACER) to help teachers at the secondary school level construct objective tests in arithmetic and algebra. The multiple-choice items were written by teachers who attended ACER writing workshops. The questions are classified according to their subject content and the…

To test the effect of clinically relevant multiple-choice item content on the validity of statistical discriminations of physicians' clinical competence, data were collected from a field test of the Emergency Medicine Examination, test items for the certification of specialists in emergency medicine. Two 91-item multiple-choice subscales were…

An earlier study was extended and replicated to examine the feasibility of generating multiple-choice test questions by transforming sentences from prose instructional material. In the first study, a computer-based algorithm was used to analyze prose subject matter and to identify high-information words. Sentences containing selected words were…