The purpose of the Florida KEY is to provide teachers with a single instrument to infer self-concept as learner of students in grades 1-6. The KEY identifies selected behaviors of students who seem to possess positive and realistic self-concepts in the area of school success. The KEY contains 23 interrogative items that describe student behavior…

A latent trait method is presented to investigate the possibility that Angoff or Nedelsky judges specify inconsistent probabilities in standard setting techniques for objectives-based instructional programs. It is suggested that judges frequently specify a low probability of success for an easy item but a large probability for a hard item. The…

Instructors who develop classroom examinations that require students to provide a numerical response to a mathematical problem are often very concerned about the appropriateness of the multiple-choice format. The present study augments previous research relevant to this concern by comparing the difficulty and reliability of multiple-choice and…

Prior research has indicated that items administered to college students for rating their instructors, can be empirically as well as logically classified on a continuum from very general to specific. Three of these hypothesized classifications of item specificity--global, general concept, and specific--were chosen to represent this continuum.…

Differences among test item writers and among different rules for writing multiple choice items were investigated. Items testing comprehension of a prose passage were varied according to five factors: (1) information density of the passage; (2) item writer; (3) deletion of nouns, as opposed to adjectives, from the sentence in order to construct…

Since grade-appropriate levels of standardized achievement tests must frequently be used in Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I evaluations, there may be large discrepancies between test difficulty and the achievement level of those being tested, with resultant inaccuracies in the scores. Procedures based on the Rasch scaling model were…

Three kinds of rating statements, trait-oriented, worker-oriented, and task-oriented were evaluated in a context permitting the comparisons to be made in terms of criteria external to the ratings. One hundred twenty Air Force noncommissioned officers assigned to seminar grouPs of 13 or 14 were involved. No evidence of superiority was found for any…

Latent trait models may offer considerable potential for the improvement of educational measurement practices, but until recently, they have received only limited attention from measurement specialists. This paper provides a brief introduction to latent trait models, and provides test practitioners with a non-technical introduction to the…

The issue of multiple-choice (MC) vs. created-response (CR) test-item formats was reexamined at the eighth-grade level in three subject areas: general science, American history, and arithmetic. In each subject area, alternate forms with the same item-content but differing in which items were in which format were prepared from standardized tests.…

Likert-type inventories of children's attitude toward the world of work were administered to approximately 1,500 students in grades 2-8. The positively and negatively stated scores were analyzed separately. Agreement with positively stated items showed almost no difference among the various grades. However, the trend toward more disagreement among…

The development and implementation in a psychology department of a set of student rating-of-instruction items was discussed. The results of item descriptive statistics, correlational, and principal component analysis supported the construct validity of the items. (Author)

Second language (L2) computer-adaptive testing (CAT) is a technologically advanced method of assessment in which the computer selects and presents test items to examinees according to the estimated level of the examinee's language ability. The basic notion of an adaptive test is to mimic automatically what a wise examiner would normally do.…

Coded, as opposed to free response items, in a multiple choice physiology test had a cueing effect which raised students' scores, especially for lower achievers. Reliability of coded items was also lower. Item format and scoring method had an effect on test results. (GDC)

Results of a study involving pathology students suggest that there is significant cluing in multiple-true-false test questions that use secondary responses to represent combinations of the primary response (e.g., "Mark B if only 1 and 3 are correct"). Thus test scores are artificially inflated and test reliability is lowered. (JMD)

Identifies the underlying concepts of student evaluation. Offers suggestions for evaluating musical achievement. Maintains that all evaluations are subjective, and suggests techniques for minimizing subjectivity. Considers various test formats, and discusses objectives for both classroom and performance achievement. (RW)