A target partition analysis (TPA) was used to help seven subject matter experts, with little expertise in testing, evaluate relationships among test items. The subjects were experts in Income Maintenance in the field of public assistance work; they were trainers affiliated with the Professional Development Program's Income Maintenance Training…

This study empirically examined the proposition that different item selection procedures contribute to the development of achievement tests that optimally serve different purposes. A test of 110 addition and subtraction problems was given to a sample of 371 first-grade students. Three subsets of 30 items were selected from this 110-item test. The…

This manual provides assistance in developing and editing questions for the Medical Library Association General and Area of Concentration Examinations for Certification or Registration. After describing the certification procedures and the examination itself, suggestions for test item writers are provided, including preparing the item-as-a-whole,…

The proposition that the optimal number of options in a multiple choice test item is three was examined. The concept of functional distractor, a plausible wrong answer that is negatively discriminating when total test performance is the criterion, is discussed. Three distinct groups of achievers (high, middle, and low) on a national standardized…

The effects of presenting test items in random order or in a sequence parallel to the order of presentation were studied by testing 92 undergraduates in an introductory psychology course at Emporia State University (Kansas). Two test forms, sequential (S) and random (R), of multiple-choice questions were prepared for four 1-hour examinations…

A. Criper and D. Davies (1986) have suggested that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) tests for prospective higher education students should include a component designed to measure the ability to manipulate reader-writer relations in academic texts. This paper examines the nature and scope of such manipulation and draws some preliminary…

This study examined three statistical methods for selecting items for mastery tests. One is the pretest-posttest method due to Cox and Vargas (1966); it is computationally simple, but has a number of serious limitations. The second is a latent trait method recommended by van der Linden (1981); it is computationally complex, but has a number of…

This paper contains the technical specifications, schematic diagrams, and program printout for a computer software package for the development and administration of diagnostic tests. The second version of the Diagnostic Testing Package DX consists of a PASCAL-based set of modules located in two main programs: (1) EDITTEST creates, modifies, and…

An observation guide for the identification of intellectually advanced preschool children was developed by adapting characteristics illustrated in the literature for older children. The 46 descriptive characteristics included in the guide were categorized in terms of three general sets: general ability, task commitment, and creativity. Teachers…

The School District Questionnaire described in this paper evolved from the Orangeburg (North Carolina) School District's plans to implement programs for improvement. The content-based questionnaire, which provides the school district with specific attitudinal feedback from parents, can be used for both pre- and posttesting following implementation…

The role of sample papers (i.e., anchor papers, prototypes, range-finders) in holistic evaluation of writing is discussed. When, where, and how many sample papers are to be selected, and who should perform the selection are covered. The process of sample selection should proceed as follows: (1) a general reading of papers by committee members to…

Although two-stage testing is not the most efficient form of adaptive testing, it has some advantages. In this paper, linear programming models are given for the construction of two-stage tests. In these models, practical constraints with respect to, among other things, test composition, administration time, and inter-item dependencies play an…

An instrument was developed to assess the extent to which a supervisor might use a given focus or use a certain style with a counseling trainee. The development of the instrument began with a brainstormed list of items that would represent elements of the discrimination model for supervision proposed by J. M. Bernard (1979). These elements…

A "maximin" model for item response theory based test design is proposed. In this model only the relative shape of the target test information function is specified. It serves as a constraint subject to which a linear programming algorithm maximizes the information in the test. In the practice of test construction there may be several…

Two iterative procedures for constructing Rasch scales are presented. A log-likelihood ratio test based on a quasi-loglinear formulation of the Rasch model is given by which one item at a time can be deleted from or added to an initial item set. In the so-called "top-down" algorithm, items are stepwise deleted from a relatively large…