Item analysis data were collected for the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test, from urban and rural Alberta (Canada) youngsters and Inuit youngsters from the Northwest Territories (Canada). Both tests were inadequate in individual item difficulty levels, suggesting the necessity of revising scoring systems and…

We describe the item modeling development and evaluation process as applied to a quantitative assessment with high-stakes outcomes. In addition to expediting the item-creation process, a model-based approach may reduce pretesting costs, if the difficulty and discrimination of model-generated items may be predicted to a predefined level of…

In order to take advantage of advances in the field of mental measurement, the Armed Forces and the Department of Defense have supported the development of a computerized adaptive version of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for use in military personnel selection and classification. This report describes the development and…

The manual for administration of the Chinese Proficiency Test contains an overview of the program, including: (1) its history, content, and format; (2) its primary focus and uses; (3) administration procedures, including registration, ordering the test, reporting scores, and billing; (4) the interpretation of test scores based on normative data…

This paper describes teacher usage of the microcomputer programs Test Analysis Package (TAP) and Student Problem Package (SPP) to analyze students' test item responses. These methods of organizing, analyzing, and reporting test results have proven useful to classroom teachers. The TAP consists of four integrated microcomputer programs to edit,…

A study investigated the appropriate use of item types for testing reading at various levels of proficiency. It was specifically concerned with item types found in the standardized group-administered Defense Language Proficiency Tests. The item formats investigated were signs in the target language, identification of underlined information,…

An experiment was performed with computer-generated data to investigate some of the operational characteristics of tailored testing as they are related to various provisions of the computer program and item pool. With respect to the computer program, two characteristics were varied: the size of the step of increase or decrease in item difficulty…

Four new versions of an acoustic structuring test were developed, administered, and analyzed in order to produce better tests and to contribute to better understanding of the abilities measured by these tests. The tests consist of tape recordings of patterns of musical notes played on an electric organ or an acoustic guitar. Item analyses and…

The differential item functioning of mathematics performance of Hispanic, Asian, and White students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was studied, using a modification of the Mantel-Haenszel Procedure. The sample for grades 3, 7, and 11, respectively, included: (1) 1,367, 1,570, and 1,580 Whites; (2) 265, 613, and 760…

The decline in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores is a direct result of lower average performance on equating questions that are reused over a period of several years. Therefore, it is important to examine the content of representative questions, used over time, for possible obsolescence. Two panels, one concentrating on the verbal section of…

The Basic Occupational Literacy Test (BOLT) was developed as an achievement test of basic skills in reading and arithmetic, for educationally disadvantaged adults. The objective was to develop a test appropriate for this population with regard to content, format, instructions, timing, norms, and difficulty level. A major issue, the use of grade…

In order to compose equivalent certification tests in the basic skills in reading, mathematics calculations and applications, and writing for high school graduation requirements, the San Jose Unified School District, California, used the Rasch computer program to arrive at the scaled difficulty level of test items. The procedure for achieving a…

TAILOR is a computer program that uses the implied orders concept as the basis for computerized adaptive testing. The basic characteristics of TAILOR, which does not involve pretesting, are reviewed here and two studies of it are reported. One is a Monte Carlo simulation based on the four-parameter Birnbaum model and the other uses a matrix of…

Technical improvements, which may be made in the reliability and validity of tests through confidence scores, are discussed. However, studies indicate that subjects do not handle their confidence uniformly. (MS)

The stability of Rasch test item difficulty parameters was investigated under varying conditions. Data were taken from a mathematics achievement test administered to over 2,000 Australian students. The experiments included: (1) relative stability of the Rasch, traditional, and z-item difficulty parameters using different sample sizes and designs;…