Developed Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge test (ADK) to assess level of knowledge about Alzheimer's disease of caregivers, professionals, and others involved in caring for Alzheimer's patients. Describes test development and presents ADK test. Discusses preliminary results suggesting that lack of knowledge is more common than misconceptions.…

Depending on the type of behavior one wants to measure, competency tests are either written or performance oriented. Information and cognitive processing are best measured by written demonstrations of the knowledge. Skills ability is best measured by performance testing. (Author/JOW)

Developed the Bulimia Test (BULIT) based on responses of clinically identified females (N=18) and normal female college students (N=119) to preliminary test items. Results showed that the BULIT provided an objective, reliable, and valid measure by which to identify individuals with symptoms of bulimia. (Instrument is appended.) (LLL)

Developed empirically based criteria for use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to aid in the assessment and diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in patients (N=200). Analysis based on an empircally derived decision rule correctly classified 74 percent of the patients in each group. (LLL)

Developed and tested a short form of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) in 107 subjects. Results showed that when statistical corrections are made for item overlap between the two forms, the resulting correlation drops to .90 and that similar results were obtained in a cross-validation study. (LLL)

An overview of key features of the Kaufman Assessment Battery (K-ABC) for Children and a history of its development are presented. The discussion covers administration and scoring, standardization, reliability, validity, and educational translation. Some early postpublication research is presented, and conclusions about the possible impact of the…

Internal consistency as one rationale for item selection from the unverse of possible test items is discussed and formulae are presented which relate the maximum internal consistency of a test to the largest eigenvalue of the interitem correlation matrix. A computer program to perform these calculations is presented. (Author/JKS)

An extensive nonparametric dimensionality analysis of latent structure was conducted on three forms of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) (December 1991, June 1992, and October 1992) using the DIMTEST model in confirmatory analyses and using DIMTEST, FAC, DETECT, HCA, PROX, and a genetic algorithm in exploratory analyses. Results indicate that…

It is widely believed that item selection methods using the maximum information approach (MI) can maintain high efficiency in trait estimation by repeatedly choosing high discriminating (alpha) items. However, the consequence is that they lead to extremely skewed item exposure distribution in which items with high alpha values becoming overly…

Testing programs that report a single score based on multiple choice and performance components must face the issue of how to derive the component scores. This paper identifies and logically evaluates alternative component weighting methods. It then examines composite reliability and validity as a function of weights, component reliability,…

Two mathematical programming approaches are presented for the assembly of ability test from item pools calibrated under a multidimensional item response theory model. Item selection is based on Fisher's Information matrix. Several criteria can be used to optimize this matrix. In this paper, the A-criterion and the D-criterion are applied. In a…

Ordinality of three subtests of a sensory-motor series was evaluated in a longitudinal study of infants. Results indicated that scalability can be affected by the responses of infants at different developmental ages. (ST)

The author advocates the construction of test items to measure whether the objectives of teaching have been attained and not to separate out pupils." (Author/AA)

Written remarks concerning an examination are presented. (DB)