The author urges the adoption of take-home exams, whether individual or group efforts, subjective or objective in nature, as they lead to much more reflective thinking, problem solving, and other forms of data analysis than do standard one-period exams. (AN)

Discusses the pros and cons of objective testing and its difficulties and dangers. (SB)

Though the Paired-Item-Score (Eakin and Long) (EJ 174 780) method of scoring true-false tests has certain advantages over the traditional scoring methods (percentage right and right minus wrong), these advantages are attained at the cost of a larger risk of misranking the examinees. (Author/BW)

Some practical guidelines for developing multiple choice tests are offered. Included are three steps: (1) test design; (2) proper construction of test items; and (3) item analysis and evaluation. (JMF)

Study findings indicate that exposure to a statement on a true-false test increased college students' (N=64) tendency to believe the statement was true, regardless of whether the statement actually was true or false. In contrast to previous research, these findings support existence of a negative suggestion effect for true-false exams. (IAH)

Objective: The use of standardized patients in Objective Structured Clinical Examinations in the assessment of psychiatric residents has increased in recent years. The aim of this study is to investigate the experience of psychiatry residents and examiners with standardized patients in Iran. Method: Final-year residents in psychiatry participated…

Cognitive performance is affected by an individual's characteristics and the environment, as well as by the nature of the task and the amount of practice at it. Mental performance tests range in complexity and include subjective estimates of mood, simple objective tests (reaction time), and measures of complex performance that require decisions to…

Now that many credentialing exams are being routinely administered by computer, new computer-based test designs, along with item response theory models, are being aggressively researched to identify specific designs that can increase the decision consistency and accuracy of pass-fail decisions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the…

The ability of preschool age children to perform generalized relational matching to sample tasks with and without an overt mediating stimulus was examined. This experiment was a direct replication of a study by Lowenkron (1984) and examined a behavioral model relevant to complex human behavior that he later came to call "joint control." Children…

A four-part experiment was carried out to study the relationship between the time course of object-feature perception and the time course of retrieval of object information from memory. The experiment consisted of 2 perceptual matching tasks, and 2 perceptual recognition tasks. In all 4 tasks, participants provided speeded judgments of the…

States that "objective tests" are based on suppositions. Different types yield different results; therefore they cannot all be objective. The commonly accepted idea that multiple-choice tests are the most objective is attacked. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)