Today's college ACCUPLACER System's Computerized Placement Test (CPT) plays a major role for determining whether post-secondary students are ready for placement into Arithmetic, Elementary Algebra, Intermediate Algebra, or College Mathematics courses. It is widely used in most college systems in the U.S. This paper discusses some of the issues to…

Computer-based technologies offer promise as a means to assess students and provide teachers with better understandings of their students' achievement. This article describes recent developments in computer-based and web-based reading and literacy assessment, focusing on assessment administration, information management, and report creation. In…

Background: The School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) 2006 is the largest, most comprehensive assessment of school health programs in the United States ever conducted. Methods: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducts SHPPS every 6 years. In 2006, computer-assisted telephone interviews or self-administered mail…

The study evaluated the comparability of two versions of a certification test: a paper-and-pencil test (PPT) and computer-based test (CBT). An effect size measure known as Cohen's d and differential item functioning (DIF) analyses were used as measures of comparability at the test and item levels, respectively. Results indicated that the effect…

In U.S. schools, students must pass statewide competency tests to graduate from high school. In this article, the authors summarize the development and testing of a program implemented to improve the skills of students failing to "make the grade" on these high-stakes tests. District personnel randomly assigned twenty-eight students who…

This paper defines Bayesian network models and examines their applications to IRT-based cognitive diagnostic modeling. These models are especially suited to building inference engines designed to be synchronous with the finer grained student models that arise in skills diagnostic assessment. Aspects of the theory and use of Bayesian network models…

There has been considerable research regarding the extent to which psychometric sound assessments sometimes yield individual score estimates that are inconsistent with the response patterns of the individual. It has been suggested that individual response patterns may differ from expectations for a number of reasons, including subject motivation,…

Differential item functioning (DIF) assessment attempts to identify items or item types for which subpopulations of examinees exhibit performance differentials that are not consistent with the performance differentials typically seen for those subpopulations on collections of items that purport to measure a common construct. DIF assessment…

Dichotomous item response theory (IRT) models can be viewed as families of stochastically ordered distributions of responses to test items. This paper explores several properties of such distributions. The focus is on the conditions under which stochastic order in families of conditional distributions is transferred to their inverse distributions,…

This paper investigates the performance of CATSIB (a modified version of the SIBTEST computer program) to assess differential item functioning (DIF) in the context of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). One of the distinguishing features of CATSIB is its theoretically built-in regression correction to control for the Type I error rates when the…

This paper reports a method for assessing the adequacy of existing item banks for computer adaptive testing. The method takes into account content specifications, test length, and stopping rules, and can be used to determine if an existing item bank is adequate to administer a computer adaptive test efficiently across differing levels of examinee…

This study assessed whether redundant stimuli are beneficial in motor performance, and how redundant information is processed, using 11 male and 11 female undergraduate students. A minimum information tracking task was presented to subjects on a computer in seven conditions. Overall, evidence seems to point to enhanced performance when information…

It is unrealistic to suppose that standard item response theory (IRT) models will be appropriate for all new and currently considered computer-based tests. In addition to developing new models, researchers will need to give some attention to the possibility of constructing and analyzing new tests without the aid of strong models. Computerized…

An experiment involving 20 graduate and undergraduate students (7 males and 13 females) at West Virginia University (Morgantown) assessed "fan network structures" of recognition memory. A fan in network memory structure occurs when several facts are connected into a single node (concept). The more links from that concept to various…

Online student assessment features in many distance-learning programs. The prevention of plagiarism has been the subject of much attention, but insufficient attention has been given to other problems of dishonesty in online assessment. We survey the types of problems that can occur and what can be done about them. We believe many educators are…