The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Precalculus Concept Assessment (PCA), a 25-item multiple-choice instrument designed to assess student reasoning abilities and understanding of foundational calculus concepts (Carlson et al., 2010). When this study was conducted, the extant research on the PCA and the PCA…

Open book assessment is not a new idea, but it does not seem to have gained ground in higher education. In particular, not much literature is available on open book examinations in mathematics and statistics in higher education. The objective of this paper is to investigate the appropriateness of open book assessments in a first-year business…

The Michigan Mathematics Early Placement Test (MMEPT) is an assessment instrument that gives 11th-grade students an appraisal of their mathematical skills in relation to college expectations. Students who take the test receive a report letter that tells them, based upon their test results, approximately where they would be placed in mathematics if…

Describes the development of a placement test specifically designed for students entering Pembroke State University. Includes question construction and suitable test standards in discussing the features of a good placement test. Concludes that the test provides a reliable measure of students potential success. (MDH)

This paper presents analyses of score reliability for a mathematics placement test developed by the Mathematical Association of America in 1984 for use with undergraduate college students. Subjects included all 589 students seeking admission to the college mathematics curricula at a private university in the South during the course of the study.…

The psychometric integrity of selected items from the Mathematics Association of America (MAA) placement tests for college students was investigated. Two alternative and parallel versions of the test were developed (Form A and Form B) for this study. Data for 539 students seeking admission into an undergraduate mathematics curriculum at a private…

This study examined and refined a mathematics skills instrument used to predict success in an introductory statistics course and to measure improvement in mathematics skills. Alternate forms of a 28-item true-false test were administered as a pretest and posttest to 18 undergraduate and 19 graduate students enrolled in introductory educational…

This study tests several explanations for discrepant results in an earlier study (Cook et al., 1985) which presented a partial pre-calibration method for equating new editions of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to the same scale as older editions. In contrast to full pre-calibration, which seeks to equate all items from two or more editions,…

The Assessment of Skills for Successful Entry and Transfer (ASSET)--a student advisement and placement service published by American College Testing (ACT) of Iowa City, Iowa--is evaluated. Focus is on determining whether the ASSET is suitable for assessing the cognitive entry characteristics of students entering the College of General and…