One of the most significant challenges facing policy makers in education today is to ensure that state assessments designed to measure student performance across specified grade-level curriculum content standards will allow all students to demonstrate what they have learned. This challenge is made complex by the varied attributes of students with…

Whether the presence of bidimensionality has any effect on the adaptive recalibration of test items was studied through live-data simulation of computer adaptive testing (CAT) forms. The source data were examinee responses to the 298 scored multiple choice items of a licensure examination in a health care profession. Three 75-item part-forms,…

This paper presents the validation of an adaptive test developed for placement purposes in French at the post-secondary level, the French CAPT. Results from a second experiment are presented in which verbal protocols were obtained from nine college students of various levels with the thinking-aloud technique used during completion of the exam. The…

Items with the highest discrimination parameter values in a logistic item response theory (IRT) model do not necessarily give maximum information. This paper shows which discrimination parameter values (as a function of the guessing parameter and the distance between person ability and item difficulty) give maximum information for the…

The most useful method of item selection for making pass-fail decisions with a Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT) was studied. Medical technology students (n=86) took a computer adaptive test in which items were targeted to the ability of the examinee. The adaptive algorithm that selected items and estimated person measures used the Rasch model and…

Computerized adaptive testing (CAT), while well-grounded in psychometric theory, has had few large-scale applications for high-stakes, secure tests in the past. This is now changing as the cost of computing has declined rapidly. As is always true where theory is translated into practice, many practical issues arise. This paper discusses a number…

In this study some alternative item selection criteria for adaptive testing are proposed. These criteria take into account the uncertainty of the ability estimates. A general weighted information criterion is suggested of which the usual maximum information criterion and the suggested alternative criteria are special cases. A simulation study was…

The quality of fit between the data and the measurement model is fundamental to any discussion of results. Fit has been the subject of inquiry since as early as the 1920s. Most early explorations concentrated on assessing global fit or subset fits on fixed length, traditional paper and pencil tests given as a single unit. The detection of aberrant…

Previous studies have shown that, when administered a self-adapted test, a few examinees will choose item difficulty levels that are not well-matched to their proficiencies, resulting in high standard errors of proficiency estimation. This study investigated whether the previously observed effects of a self-adapted test--lower anxiety and higher…

Expert systems can be used to aid decisionmaking. A computerized adaptive test is one kind of expert system, although not commonly recognized as such. A new approach, termed EXSPRT, was devised that combines expert systems reasoning and sequential probability ratio test stopping rules. Two versions of EXSPRT were developed, one with random…

The graded response model for two-stage testing was applied to an attitudes toward science scale using real-data simulation. The 48-item scale was administered to 920 students at a grade-8 equivalent in Singapore. A two-stage 16-item computerized adaptive test was developed. In two-stage testing an initial, or routing, test is followed by a…

According to item response theory (IRT), examinee ability estimation is independent of the particular set of test items administered from a calibrated pool. Although the most popular application of this feature of IRT is computerized adaptive (CA) testing, a recently proposed alternative is self-adapted (SA) testing, in which examinees choose the…

Tailored Response Testing (TRT) is a new type of test that has demonstrated its applicability to the evaluation of human performance in a wide variety of occupations and work settings. The Navy is using TRT to measure the technical proficiency of job incumbents in three of its jobs. The methodology holds great promise for testing aboard ships as…

A study was conducted to validate the Army's Computerized Adaptive Screening Test (CAST), using data from 2,240 applicants from 60 army recruiting stations across the nation. CAST is a computer-assisted adaptive test used to predict performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). AFQT scores are computed by adding four subtest scores of…

The current technology of computerized testing is discussed, and a few comments are made on how such technology might be used for assessing school-related skills as part of the National Assessment of Educational progress (NAEP). The critical feature of computerized assessment procedures is that the test items are presented in interactive fashion,…