The legislative history of legislation concerning disclosure of standardized college admissions test items is reviewed, the effect of existing laws in California and New York is outlined, and public policy and legal questions leading to and resulting from the legislation are discussed. (MSE)

A study involving undergraduate college students enrolled in an introductory psychology course showed that test item arrangement by difficulty or by order of content presentation has no effect on total achievement test score. The data also fail to demonstrate any influence of test item order on student perception of test difficulty. (RM)

Interactive effects of item difficulty, test anxiety, and failure feedback are examined in a study using multiple choice verbal aptitude items. Results indicate that ability estimates can be affected by the examinee's improved performance, especially for students given an easy test. (Author/DWH)

Examines the CUNY-WAT program and questions many aspects of it, especially the choice and phrasing of topics. (FL)

Psychology students studied one of two versions of a passage that explained several concepts. One version included definitions of concepts and examples; the other included definitions only. A major finding was that the increased performance of students who received examples was obtained on applied questions but not on literal questions. (Author/RM)

A mathematics item on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was found to be faulty and received wide publicity. A detailed investigation into its mathematical and psychometric properties is presented. It was found that the problem could be considered ambiguous but that almost no one noticed the ambiguity. (Author/JKS)

Several items from the Information and Comprehension subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children were cited by Judge Grady in his opinion in the PASE (Parents in Action in Special Education) case as being culturally biased against Black children. Error analysis showed no significant "cultural" differences between White and…

Consistent behavior is a desirable characteristic that common items are expected to have when administered to different groups. Findings from the literature have established that items do not always behave in consistent ways; item indices and IRT item parameter estimates of the same items differ when obtained from different administrations.…

This paper presents a multistage adaptive testing test development paradigm that promises to handle content balancing and other test development needs, psychometric reliability concerns, and item exposure. The bundled multistage adaptive testing (BMAT) framework is a modification of the computer-adaptive sequential testing framework introduced by…

This paper first provides a summary and overview of what is already known and what is needed to learn about item types for future assessments by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In essence, the question addressed is whether constructed response items provide more information about what students are capable of doing than that…

This study examined the time different ability level examinees spend taking a CAT on demanding items to these examinees. It was also found that high able examinees spend more time on the pretest items, which are not tailored to the examinees' ability level, than do lower ability examinees. Higher able examinees showed persistence with test…

A study was conducted to investigate how differential item functioning (DIF) is associated with student characteristics such as gender and ethnicity for the total group and to understand the pattern and nature of existing group differences by conducting DIF analyses separately within gender and ethnicity. The research is unique in that it…

The Rasch Model is an item response theory, one parameter model developed that states that the probability of a correct response on a test is a function of the difficulty of the item and the ability of the candidate. Item banking is useful for language testing. The Rasch Model provides estimates of item difficulties that are meaningful,…

This document contains released reading comprehension passages, test items, and writing prompts from the Colorado Student Assessment Program for 2001. The sample questions and prompts are included without answers or examples of student responses. Test materials are included for: (1) Grade 4 Reading and Writing; (2) Grade 4 Lectura y Escritura…

The Mantel-Haenszel (MH) differential item functioning (DIF) parameter for uniform DIF is well defined when item responses follow the two-parameter-logistic (2PPL) item response function (IRF), but not when they follow the three-parameter-logistic (3PL) IRF, the model typically used with multiple choice items. This research report presents a…