In self-adapted testing, examinees are allowed to choose the difficulty of each item to be presented immediately before attempting it. Previous research has demonstrated that self-adapted testing leads to better performance than do fixed-order tests and is preferred by examinees. The present study examined the strategies that 29 college students…

The effects of item position on item statistics were studied in a large set of data from tests of word knowledge (WK) and arithmetic reasoning (AR). Position effects on item response theory (IRT) parameter estimates and classical item statistics were also investigated. Data were collected as part of a project to refine the Army's Computerized…

Four discussions of test construction based on item response theory (IRT) are presented. The first discussion, "Test Design as Model Building in Mathematical Programming" (T. J. J. M. Theunissen), presents test design as a decision process under certainty. A natural way of modeling this process leads to mathematical programming. General…

Gender differences were examined on three computer-administered spatial processing tasks: (1) the Intercept task, requiring processing dynamic or moving figures; (2) the mental rotation test, employing rotated asymmetric polygons; and (3) the integrating details test, in which subjects performed a complex visual synthesis. Participants were about…

This study presents data augmenting the validity studies of the Wheatley Cube (McDaniel and Kroll, 1984), a computer managed test of spatial visualization. Twenty-one students in pilot training are administered several instruments designed to measure the ability to construct a cognitive three-dimensional space, including: (1) the Wheatley Cube,…

The answer-until-correct procedure has made comparatively little impact on the field of educational testing due to the absence of a sound theoretical base for turning the response data into measures. Three new latent trait models are described. They differ in their complexity, though each is designed to yield a single parameter to measure student…

Two related studies were conducted to determine whether students read all-capital text and mixed text displayed on a computer screen with the same speed and accuracy. Seventy-seven college students read M. A. Tinker's "Basic Reading Rate Test" displayed on a PLATO computer screen. One treatment consisted of paragraphs in all-capital type…

Online practice tests and quizzes are commonly available to higher education students. The extent of student use of such study tools and the relationship of use to achievement, however, have not been fully investigated. One hundred twelve college students were encouraged to use optional online quizzes in preparation for proctored examinations.…

The theory and technology of item characteristic curve (ICC) response theory and adaptive testing were applied to judging individuals' competencies against a prespecified mastery level to determine whether each individual is a "master" or "nonmaster" of a specified content domain. Items from two conventionally administered mastery tests…

When criterion-referenced tests are used to assign examinees to states reflecting their performance level on a test, the better known methods for determining test length, which consider relationships among domain scores and errors of measurement, have their limitations. The purpose of this paper is to present a computer system named TESTLEN, which…

Judgments that favorably set an individual apart from others tend to be made more rapidly, suggesting that the self-concept is both an effective and a cognitive entity. Subjects rated the self-applicability of traits on a 100-point scale. As in other studies using dichotomous judgements, judgement speed increased with increasing self-applicability…

Two methods of interactive, computer-assisted testing methods for multiple-choice items were compared with each other and with conventional multiple-choice tests. The interactive testing methods compared were tailored testing and the respond-until-correct (RUC) item response method. In tailored testing, examinee ability is successively estimated…

An earlier study was extended and replicated to examine the feasibility of generating multiple-choice test questions by transforming sentences from prose instructional material. In the first study, a computer-based algorithm was used to analyze prose subject matter and to identify high-information words. Sentences containing selected words were…

Three pyramidal adaptive tests and a conventional peaked test were constructed and administered by computer to two groups of students enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses. Six methods of scoring pyramidal tests were evaluated with respect to score distributions, stability, and the degree of relationship among scoring methods and between…

The effects of immediate knowledge of results (KR) concerning the correctness or incorrectness of each item response on a computer-administered test of verbal ability were investigated. The effects of KR were examined on a 50-item conventional test and a stradaptive ability test and in high- and low-ability groups. The primary dependent variable…