The present monte carlo simulation study was designed to examine the effects of multidimensionality during the administration of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). It was assumed that multidimensionality existed in the individuals to whom test items were being administered, i.e., that the correct or incorrect responses given by an individual…

How accurately deltas (statistics measuring the difficulty of items) established by pre-test populations reflect deltas obtained from final form populations, and the consequent utility of pre-test deltas for constructing final (operational test) forms to meet developed statistical specifications were studied. Data were examined from five subject…

The agreement between item response theory-based and Mantel Haenszel (MH) methods in identifying biased items on tests was studied. Data came from item responses of four spaced samples of 1,000 examinees each--two samples of 1,000 Anglo-American and two samples of 1,000 Native American students taking the New Mexico High School Proficiency…

Diagnostic testing can provide specific information about student skills as a decision-making aid to teachers in prescribing instruction, identifying needs for remediation, determining effective instructional materials and methods, and ultimately, improving student learning. Diagnostic testing, as viewed here, includes individual and group…

The successful Wisconsin Title 1 project item bank offers a valid, flexible, and efficient means of providing migrant student tests in reading and mathematics tailored to instructor curricula. The item bank system consists of nine PASCAL computer programs which maintain, search, and select from approximately 1,000 test items stored on floppy disks…

Teacher questions have been the subject of a substantial amount of research and analysis in recent years. Debate has centered around the appropriate use of this instructional and evaluative tool. A study examined the impact on student achievement of manipulating abstractness-concreteness, independent of cognitive level, in achievement test items.…

The third section of this two-volume report examines the utility of the model developed in section I for application in a classroom testing situation. The model was applied in arithmetic classes through a weekly testing program. The teacher specified the generic task being taught, tests were constructed using a table of random numbers to select…

The competencies, item specifications, and sample items for the reading measures devised for the Wisconsin Competency-Based Testing Program are provided in this booklet. Following lists of reading competencies to be tested for grades three, seven, and ten, the booklet presents guidelines used in preparing the tests and test items; general item…

The purposes of the present study were to ascertain whether or not two particular formatting characteristics influenced seventh grade student performance on math tests. One research question focused on the effects of decimal positioning in multiple choice options for computational items. In a second question, labeling format was compared with…

Many researchers have suggested that the cause of differential item functioning (DIF) can in part be due to the misspecification of the supporting trait distribution (STD). This paper demonstrates how a unidimensional item response theory (IRT) calibration of response data, generated from a two-dimensional IRT model, results in DIF when the…

A method is proposed for the detection of item bias with respect to observed or unobserved subgroups. The method uses quasi-loglinear models for the incomplete subgroup x test score x item 1 x ... x item k contingency table. If the subgroup membership is unknown, the models are the incomplete-latent-class models of S. J. Haberman (1979). The…

The development and use of item shells in the construction of a series of standardized tests of reading comprehension at the elementary school level are described. An item shell is an item that is devoid of specific content, but contains key words and a distinctive syntactic structure. The specific content of the item shell varies depending on the…

The use of loglinear latent class models to detect item bias was studied. Purposes of the study were to: (1) develop procedures for use in assessing item bias when the grouping variable with respect to which bias occurs is not observed; (2) develop bias detection procedures that relate to a conceptually different assessed trait--a categorical…

The use of item response theory (IRT) is a prerequisite to successful use of computerized test systems. In item response models, as opposed to classical test theory, the abilities of the examinees and the properties of the items are parameterized separately. Therefore, when measuring the abilities of examinees, the model implicitly corrects for…

Increased emphasis on public school accountability has resulted in several states including a science component in their elementary and middle school testing program. This component often includes items designed to measure process skill ability. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of high school students on four types of…