Discusses the comparison of groups of individuals who were administered different forms of a test. Focuses on the situation in which there is little overlap in content between the test forms. Reviews equating problems in national tests in Canada and Israel. (SLD)

The reliability of scores from four forms of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was estimated using a hybrid item response theory model. It was found that there was very little difference between overall reliability when the testlet items were assumed to be independent and when their dependence was modeled. (Author/SLD)

Some cautions are sounded for converting a linearly administered test to an adaptive format. Four areas are identified in which practices broadly used in traditionally constructed tests can have adverse effects if thoughtlessly adopted when a test is administered in an adaptive mode. (SLD)

A series of computer simulations was run to measure the relationship between testlet validity and the factors of item pool size and testlet length for both adaptive and linearly constructed testlets. Results confirmed the generality of earlier empirical findings of H. Wainer and others (1991) that making a testlet adaptive yields only marginal…

When an examination consists, in whole or in part, of constructed response items, it is a common practice to allow the examinee to choose among a variety of questions. This procedure is usually adopted so that the limited number of items that can be completed in the allotted time does not unfairly affect the examinee. This results in the de facto…

When an examination consists in whole or part of constructed response test items, it is common practice to allow the examinee to choose a subset of the constructed response questions from a larger pool. It is sometimes argued that, if choice were not allowed, the limitations on domain coverage forced by the small number of items might unfairly…

The initial development of a testlet-based algebra test was previously reported (Wainer and Lewis, 1990). This account provides the details of this excursion into the use of hierarchical testlets and validity-based scoring. A pretest of two 15-item hierarchical testlets was carried out in which examinees' performance on a 4-item subset of each…

Recent experience with the Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT) has raised a number of concerns about its practical applications. The concerns are principally involved with the concept of having the computer construct the test from a precalibrated item pool, and substituting statistical characteristics for the test developer's skills. Problems with…