Freshmen (N=202) took two batteries of aptitude tests 10 months apart. Six pairs of tests were studied. Two pairs were identical, two were parallel, and two were completely different. This design made it possible to separate three components of practice: (a) general test sophistication, (b) specific practice effect, and (c) item familiarization.…

Knowing questions in advance enabled students to structure their study process and to devote more time and effort to learning content. Student responses to this method of testing, test scores, and comparison with results from other methods showed that a high level of learning was achieved. (Author/MS)

Humanistic psychologists tend to describe psychodiagnostic assessment as nonhumanistic. They argue that assessment is reductionistic and artificial, ignores the examiner-patient relationship, judges people, and is overly intellectual. These concerns are then addressed from a pro-assessment perspective. (EVH)

Discusses perceived difficulty of subjects and the comparison of standards of the examinations in different subjects. (SL)

Five hundred clinical psychologists were surveyed about their use and opinions of psychological tests. Results showed that both objective and projective tests are used by clinical psychologists of all major therapeutic orientations. (Author)

A three-dimensional (3-D) test, comparable to twenty-five items from the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts, constructed to determine whether 3-D stimuli would facilitate responses when compared to two dimensional (2-D) stimuli, revealed no significant effects for the version of the test (2-D or 3-D) or the order of administration. (MB)

The effects of examination format and previous experience with microcomputers on the test scores of 96 undergraduate students were investigated. Results indicated no significant differences in the scores obtained on the two types of test administration (microcomputer and traditional paper and pencil). Computer experience was not an important…

Describes a system in which questions tailored to the examinee's capabilities are administered by computer. Enumerates possible benefits of the system, reviews the "state of the art," and predicts potential applications of computerized adaptive testing. (MCG)

Complex multiple choice (CMC) items are frequently used to test knowledge about repetitive information. In two independent comparisons, performance on the CMC items surpassed that of the multiple true-false clusters. Data indicate that performance on CMC items is inflated, and distractors on CMC items fail to prevent guessing. (Author/PN)

Author looks at the controversy over school-leaving examinations in America. (Editor/RK)

This article is mainly concerned with a study of the relation between the content of a multiple choice test and its composition, from the point of view of those features in tests which enable the testee to derive the correct answer by studying the composition of the test itself. (Author/POP)

The purposes of this research study were to develop and field test anchor-based judgmental methods for enabling test specialists to estimate item difficulty statistics. The study consisted of three related field tests. In each, researchers worked with six Law School Admission Test (LSAT) test specialists and one or more of the LSAT subtests. The…

In constrained adaptive testing, the numbers of constraints needed to control the content of the tests can easily run into the hundreds. Proper initialization of the algorithm becomes a requirement because the presence of large numbers of constraints slows down the convergence of the ability estimator. In this paper, an empirical initialization of…

The case of adaptive testing under a multidimensional logistic response model is addressed. An adaptive algorithm is proposed that minimizes the (asymptotic) variance of the maximum-likelihood (ML) estimator of a linear combination of abilities of interest. The item selection criterion is a simple expression in closed form. In addition, it is…

The multistage alpha-stratified computerized adaptive testing (CAT) design advocated a new philosophy of pool management and item selection using low discriminating items first. It has been demonstrated through simulation studies to be effective both in reducing item overlap rate and enhancing pool utilization with certain pool types. Based on…