In recent years the use of expert judgement to set and maintain examination standards has been increasingly criticised in favour of approaches based on statistical modelling. This paper reviews existing research on this controversy and attempts to unify the evidence within a framework where expertise is utilised in the form of comparative…

It has often been argued that all techniques of standard setting are arbitrary and likely to yield different results for different techniques or persons. This paper deals with a related but hitherto ignored aspect of standard setting, namely, the possibility that Angoff or Nedelsky judges misspecify the probabilities of the borderline student's…

A systematic method for compromise between absolute and relative examination standards is proposed. The passing score is assumed to be related to expected pass rate through a simple linear function. Results define a function relating the percentage of successful candidates given a specified passing score to the passing score. (Author/DWH)

In previous studies of educational systems, Markov chains have often been used in simulations in which history played no role because all events were described as independent of each other. Mono-level dynamics (i.e., the social context in which learning occurs is ignored) have also been applied to simulations. Educational theories, however, are…