Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) and multistage testing (MST) have become two of the most popular modes in large-scale computer-based sequential testing. Though most designs of CAT and MST exhibit strength and weakness in recent large-scale implementations, there is no simple answer to the question of which design is better because different…

Adaptive testing is advantageous in that it provides more efficient ability estimates with fewer items than linear testing does. Item-driven adaptive pretesting may also offer similar advantages, and verification of such a hypothesis about item calibration was the main objective of this study. A suitability index (SI) was introduced to adaptively…

Multistage adaptive tests (MSTs) have gained increasing popularity in recent years. MST is a balanced compromise between linear test forms (i.e., paper-and-pencil testing and computer-based testing) and traditional item-level computer-adaptive testing (CAT). It combines the advantages of both. On one hand, MST is adaptive (and therefore more…