The admissable probability measurement (APM) format was used to score a criterion referenced language arts test administered in an inner city junior high school. Its 30 items covered capitalization, punctuation, parts of speech, and sentence analysis. With APM, students indicate their confidence in their answer choice, and guessing is heavily…

THIS STUDY, PART OF A SERIES INVOLVING A VARIETY OF COURSE CONTENT AND TRAINING CONDITIONS, COMPARED PROGRAMED INSTRUCTION WITH CONVENTIONAL INSTRUCTION TO GAIN INFORMATION ABOUT THE GENERAL UTILITY OF PROGRAMED METHODS. THE PERFORMANCE OF 200 NAVY TRAINEES TAKING 26 HOURS OF CONVENTIONAL INSTRUCTION IN ELECTRICAL CALCULATIONS, DIRECT CURRENT…

This paper is a review of opinion and research concerning the objectivity and relevance of grades and grade averages as measures and as predictors of success. As measures they are ambiguous, reflecting differences in sex, basic temperament, instructors, departments, institutions, as much as levels of competence. And as a predictor of…

It is asserted in this paper that some standardized tests do not do a good job of what they claim to do, and for some testing purposes nonstandardized tests are more appropriate or efficient. Under present circumstances, group I.Q. tests should be abolished. They provide no useful information that cannot be gained from achievement tests. And what…

In a comparative evaluation of a standard true-false format for personality assessment and a forced-choice format, subjects from college residential units were assigned randomly to respond either to the forced-choice or standard true-false form of the Personality Research Form (PRF). All subjects also rated themselves and the members of their…

A study investigated the effect of test item type (multiple-choice or open-ended) on performance reading comprehension tests given in both the student's native language and a second language. Subjects were 24 native Arabic-speaking and 38 native Hebrew-speaking students at Haifa University (Israel), all enrolled in a course in English as a second…

Recent emphasis on "academics only" in educational curriculum, with content influenced primarily by state-mandated tests, raises questions about the place of career education in the curriculum. It also leads to questions about how to reach nonacademic students, those whose interests and aptitudes lie in more practical knowledge outside the…

The purpose of this study is to examine the content of the questions in a number of Advanced Placement Examinations and to attempt to identify content that is related to gender-based performance differences. Free-response questions for ten forms of the AP® Exams in U.S. History, European History, Biology, Microeconomics, and Macroeconomics were…

Gives examples of major sources of unreliability in multiple choice items in health professions classroom achievement tests (clues to response combinations, mutually exclusive alternatives, implausible distractors) and offers some suggestions for eliminating them when writing such tests. (MF)

Provides a detailed analysis of techniques used for second language vocabulary assessment and the implied assumptions about the underlying construct of vocabulary knowledge. The article notes that existing measures of vocabulary size are uninformative as to the depth of knowledge that learners have about particular words. (56 references)…

Describes a computer program that takes multiple-choice cloze passages and compiles them into proofreading exercises. Results reveal that such a computerized test type can be used to accurately measure the proficiency of students of English as a Second Language in Hong Kong. (14 references) (Author/CK)

Questions what assessment strategies are appropriate for the National Standards and how they might differ from more traditional assessments. Provides guidelines for standards-based assessments and several sets of sample questions. Suggests the adoption of performance assessment strategies for material requiring evaluative thinking. (MJP)

The effects of test performance of differentially written multiple-choice tests and test takers' cognitive style were studied for 47 graduate students and 35 public school and college teachers. Adhering to test-writing item guidelines resulted in mean scores basically the same for two groups of differing cognitive style. (SLD)

These proceedings contain the papers of the 11th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2014), October 25-27, 2014, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and endorsed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in…

This paper traces developments in educational psychology and measurement that led to the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) and the application of educational measurement terms such as validity and reliability to testing. Use of a table of specifications for planning…