A United States Employment Service (USES) General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) plan was formulated to evaluate and develop additional job-related assessment methods. Eighteen alternative predictors were reviewed, from which biodata was selected for development. The literature indicates that biodata provides increased validity with little or no…

Three experiments were conducted to investigate whether graphic organizers (GOs) were more effective than concept maps (CMs) in facilitating text learning. Experiment 1, which involved 56 undergraduates, was a replication of the second experiment of D. H. Robinson and K. A. Kiewra (1995) except that only GO and CM conditions were included. All…

This study examined three questions about measures of accomplishments--notable attainments that have been publicly recognized: their pseudoipsativity, the correspondence between quantity and quality scores, and their dimensionality. Comparable samples of graduate students described their accomplishments on a questionnaire or judged the similarity…

Conditional item independence, also known as local independence, is necessary for the accurate estimation of item parameters within item response theory (IRT). Given that the condition of local independence will be violated to at least some degree when unidimensional models are used to represent multidimensional data, it is important to study the…

This digest presents a list of recommendations for writing multiple-choice test items, based on psychometrics statistics are typically provided by a measurement, or test scoring, service, where tests are machine-scored or by testing software packages. Test makers can capitalize on the fact that "bad" items can be differentiated from…

The average Kullback-Keibler (K-L) information index (H. Chang and Z. Ying, in press) is a newly proposed statistic in Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) item selection based on the global information function. The objectives of this study were to improve understanding of the K-L index with various parameters and to compare the performance of the…

The relationship between examinee ability and the accuracy of maximum likelihood item parameter estimation is explored in terms of the expected (Fisher) information. Information functions are used to find the optimum ability levels and maximum contributions to information for estimating item parameters in three commonly used logistic item response…

Previous studies found inconsistent results about the factor structure of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), with one study finding a two-factor structure and the other, a three-factor solution. This study investigated those inconsistencies and provided further information about the TOEFL factor structure. It was hypothesized that…

An overview of teaching portfolios is presented so that principals and other school administrators can make informed choices about their use. In its most basic form, a teaching portfolio is a collection of information about a teacher's practice. It becomes a structured documentary history when it is supported by reflective writing, deliberation,…

This report investigates the dimensionality of the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics test in the context of subgroup differences. The analysis approach of this study utilized key grouping variables of the NAEP reports (e.g., gender, ethnicity), but had the advantage that subgroup comparisons were not only done in…

The designing of tests has been a source of concern for test developers over the past decade. Various kinds of test forms have been applied. Among these are the fixed-form test, the adaptive test, and the testlet. Each of these forms has its own design. In this paper, the construction of test forms is placed within the general framework of optimal…

Based on the concept that the natural way of learning is by making mistakes in which immediate self-correction takes place, this booklet discuses how teachers can develop their own sequential spelling tests. The booklet discusses the five steps in giving a sequential spelling test (read the word aloud, students repeat the word, students attempt to…

When items are selected during a computerized adaptive test (CAT) solely with regard to their measurement properties, it is commonly found that certain items are administered to nearly every examinee, and that a small number of the available items will account for a large proportion of the item administrations. This presents a clear security risk…

This concise report begins with an overview of the Accelerated Reader (AR), a learning information system designed to help teachers manage literature-based reading. It goes on to describe how AR quizzes are designed to meet three main criteria: providing an efficient, unbiased assessment of reading comprehension; motivating students to practice…

The purpose of many certification or licensure tests is to identify candidates who possess some level of minimum competence to practice their profession. In general, this type of test is referred to as classification testing. When this type of test is administered with a computer, the test is a computerized classification test (CCT). This paper…