Supervisory performance appraisals may be of limited utility in the validation of bilingual tests because incumbents are often hired to be the only employee in a unit who possesses the skills necessary to do the job. In an effort to provide criterion-related validity for four equivalent forms of a Spanish/English bilingual test for school district…

This Vocational-Technical Education Consortium of States (V-TECS) criterion-referenced test item bank provides 325 multiple-choice items and 18 matching items for ornamental horticulture production occupations. Job titles covered are specialty grower, plant propagator, and horticultural worker I and II. The following information is provided in…

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and degree of differences in expert versus novice knowledge structures, both before and after training, when judging the similarity of multiple-choice test items within a statistics and test theory (STT) domain. Subjects were employees of the Testing Division of the New York State Department of…

Customer-Driven Development is a technique from the software development method called extreme Programming (XP) where customers (most importantly including end users of all levels) are closely involved in the software design and redesign process. This method of producing software suitable for customers has been adapted to help in the production of…

The Common European Framework describes language proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening on a six-level scale. The Framework provides a common language with which to discuss students' progress. This report describes a study conducted with two panels of English language experts to map scores from four tests that collectively assess…

Intended for students taking the English 33 Grade 12 Diploma Examinations in Alberta, Canada, this writing test booklet contains the composition component of the June 1989 tests. During 2.5 hours, students are required to perform the following writing tasks: (1) a personal response to an excerpt from Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth…

Intended for students taking English 30 Grade Diploma Examinations in Alberta, Canada, this writing test booklet contains the composition component of the June 1989 tests. During 2.5 hours, students are required to complete a minor writing assignment in which they give a personal response to William Butler Yeats'"The Fascination of What's…

Latent trait measurement theory was used to investigate the measurement characteristics of both parts of a multiple-choice measure of field-independence, the Finding Embedded Figures Test (FEFT). Analysis was based on data provided by 1,528 students enrolled in one of two middle schools located in the southern United States. Of the subjects, 731…

This study compares the fit of the 3-parameter model to the Ability Removing Random Guessing (ARRG) model on data from a wide range of tests of cognitive ability in three representative samples. When the guessing parameters under the 3-parameter model are estimated individually for each item, the 3-parameter model yields the better fit to…

Issues in designing valid tests for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are discussed. Test scores are often provided without any information on the nature of the tasks represented. Because test domains are defined by individual item writers, the generalizability between tests and items is suspect. While typical content…

One of the most ambitious attempts to assess students' understanding of mathematics was carried out in England between 1974 and 1979. The results of this study indicate that there is a need in an overall assessment program to evaluate students' algebraic understanding as well as to measure their achievement in algebraic manipulations and problem…

This study investigated the effects on the performance of different age group students of: (1) method of task presentation; (2) format of test questionnaire; and (3) the numerical content of the tasks. The sample consisted of 556 students from grades 7, 9 and 12. The tasks, used for assessing reasoning skills, were taken from the Video-Taped Group…

A comparison is presented of alternate-choice and true-false item forms used in an undergraduate natural science course. The alternate-choice item is a modified two-choice multiple-choice item in which the two responses are included within the question stem. This study (1) compared the difficulty level, discrimination level, reliability, and…

The study investigated the issue of differential selection of foils (incorrect responses) with Black English structures by black and white examinees. Linguistic research revealed systematic differences between Black English and Standard American English. Grammatical and phonological features were important distinctions. Five categories of Black…

Test scores were compared for two types of objective achievement tests--multiple choice tests and the recently developed Multi-Digit Test (MDT) procedure. MDT is an approximation of the fill-in-the-blank technique. Students select their answers from long lists of alphabetized terms, with each answer corresponding to a number from 001 to 999. The…