It is important for the teacher to choose effective software for students. It is also important for designers to know what features of educational software make it effective. But the results of studies dealing with the effectiveness of educational software are contradictory. One reason for such results might be the fact that meta-analysis covers…

Item and test analyses can be used to revise and improve both test items and the test as a whole. Recommendations for item and test analysis practices as they are reported in commonly used measurement textbooks are summarized. A heuristic data set is used to illustrate test and item analysis practices. Techniques developed in this paper are…

A procedure for item analysis using distance clustering is described. Items are grouped according to the predominant factors measured, regardless of what they are. The procedure provides an efficient method of treating unanswered items. (Author/RC)

A test was developed for measuring the ability of college students to analyze emotional and nonemotional subject matter. Results of convergent and discriminant validation indicated that responses to emotional items appeared to change at an increasing rate with years in college, while responses to nonemotional items did not. (Author/RC)

Descriptive behavioral statements were written for each of the 609 items found on six career development tests in order to compare the tests in terms of their coverage of the major career development components and in terms of the specific learner behaviors included in the test outline. (Author)

The paper-and-pencil 50-item elementary school form of the dogmatism scale was shortened by use of the item statistics x50 and to produce a 20-item instrument with a test characteristic curve designed to maximally spread respondents around the midpoint of the score range. (Editor)

Predictive Sample Reuse is an alternative to parameter estimation for solving a variety of statistical problems. The technique is described and its relevance to criterion referenced measurement discussed. An item analysis procedure which does not require multiple test administrations or variability in test or item scores and which adheres to the…

Formulas and a FORTRAN program for computing Kendall's Tau as well as a generalized Spearman rho coefficient from ordered contingency tables are described. (Author)

Examines the application of the Rasch simple logistic model to analogy test items. (RC)

The development of a new technique, the Relative Difficulty Ratio (RDR), is described, as well as how it can be used to determine the difficulty level of a test so that meaningful inter-test difficulty comparisons can be made. Assumptions made in computing RDR include: 1) each item must be scored dichotomously with only one answer choice keyed as…

INVESTIGATION IS CONTINUED INTO VARIOUS EFFECTS OF NON-INDEPENDENT ERROR INTRODUCED INTO MULTIPLE-CHOICE TEST SCORES AS A RESULT OF CHANCE GUESSING SUCCESS. A MODEL IS DEVELOPED IN WHICH THE CONCEPT OF THEORETICAL COMPONENTS OF SCORES IS NOT INTRODUCED AND IN WHICH, THEREFORE, NO ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING ANY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUCH COMPONENTS NEED…

Cross-validation in relation to choosing the best tests and selecting the best items in tests is discussed. Cross-validation demonstrated whether a decision derived from one set of data is truly effective when this decision is applied to another independent, but relevant, sample of people. Cross-validation is particularly important after…