This guide is designed to help teachers create test items that measure a variety of higher level thinking abilities. Part One, "Foundations for Item Writing," provides a context for item writing. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book and defines basic concepts, principles, and terminology. Chapter 2 integrates research literature to develop a typology of student behavior that is used throughout the book. Chapter 3 presents item formats and arguments for the use of various types. Part Two, "Writing Test Items," is the core of the book. Chapter 4 focuses on multiple-choice formats, and chapter 5 deals with student outcomes that require expert judgments in using a rating scale. This topic is subdivided into chapter 5A, which deals with issues in performance testing, and chapter 5B, which addresses issues of scoring student performance. Chapter 6 discusses "low-inference" student behavior and scoring methods. Chapter 7 discusses portfolio assessment, and chapter 8 examines the writing of items to assess affective outcomes. Part Three, "Evaluating Test Items," provides guidance on examining and improving items. Chapter 9 includes a series of item reviews that are painstaking but necessary to polish items, and chapter 10 deals with student responses. The focus is on statistical methods, but qualitative methods are also included. Each chapter contains references. (Contains 5 figures and 60 tables.) (SLD)