How accurately deltas (statistics measuring the difficulty of items) established by pre-test populations reflect deltas obtained from final form populations, and the consequent utility of pre-test deltas for constructing final (operational test) forms to meet developed statistical specifications were studied. Data were examined from five subject…

The agreement between item response theory-based and Mantel Haenszel (MH) methods in identifying biased items on tests was studied. Data came from item responses of four spaced samples of 1,000 examinees each--two samples of 1,000 Anglo-American and two samples of 1,000 Native American students taking the New Mexico High School Proficiency…

Early National Teacher Examinations test-appraisal studies focused only on the extent to which the content covered on a test matched the content of teacher education curricula. Recently, there has been a shift in emphasis from adequacy-of-preparation, which is now seen by many as irrelevant to establishing the appropriateness of a teacher…

The psychometric characteristics of the Graduate Record Examinations General Test (GRE-GT) were studied for three handicapped groups. Experimental subjects took the GRE-GT between October 1981 and June 1984; they include: (1) 151 visually-impaired students taking large-type, extended-time administrations; (2) 188 visually-impaired students taking…

Work redesign for improving satisfaction or productivity depends partially on employee attributes because employees respond differently to work conditions. The Hackman-Oldham theory distinguishes "job" from employee responses to job. A job's motivating potential is thus linked to five core characteristics that affect three psychological…

The purpose of this research study was to assess item response model-test data fit using residuals. First, a comparison of raw and standardized residuals for describing model-test data fit was carried out. Second, hypotheses concerning the relationship between residual sizes and several item characteristics were studied. The analyses with…

The purpose of the paper is to determine whether test forms of the Mathematics Usage Test (AAP Math) of the American College Testing Program are parallel in a multidimensional sense. The AAP Math is an achievement test of mathematics concepts acquired by high school students by the end of their third year. To determine the dimensionality of the…

Many researchers have suggested that the cause of differential item functioning (DIF) can in part be due to the misspecification of the supporting trait distribution (STD). This paper demonstrates how a unidimensional item response theory (IRT) calibration of response data, generated from a two-dimensional IRT model, results in DIF when the…

Recent theoretical developments in cognitive psychology imply both a need and a possibility for methodological development. In particular, the theory of problem solving proposed by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon (1972) provides the rationale for a new empirical method for the processing of think-aloud protocols--trace analysis. A detailed…

Procedures for developing and validating a modified cloze test are described. The multiple-choice cloze procedure was developed to aid in the rapid placement of college freshmen who are students of English as a second language. It was designed to overcome some problems in the original cloze test, to reduce anxiety, and to be machine scored. The…

New legislation in 1972 shifted the emphasis of the California Assessment Program (CAP) from traditional every pupil achievement testing to a more efficient multiple-matrix testing design, under which a broad spectrum of skills could be surveyed without undue expenditure of educational resources. Scale score reporting was introduced to the grade 6…

A 113-item survey instrument was designed to measure the class climate perceptions of 20,157 students in grades 7-12 as part of the "A Study of Schooling" research project. The 29 constructs of the questionnaire focused on students' interpersonal needs, classroom procedures, and instructional practices. Survey items were written in the first…

A strategy for overcoming problems with the Rasch model's inability to handle missing data involves a pairwise algorithm which manipulates the data matrix to separate out the information needed for the estimation of item difficulty parameters in a test. The method of estimation compares two or three items at a time, separating out the ability…

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the use of confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the existence of item bias in an affective scale measuring self concept. The LISREL IV program was used to detect test item bias and factorial invariance. The ethnic groups compared in the study were Black, Hispanic, and White. The obtained factor…

This manuscript is a report of the third revision of the Maryland Preschool Self-Concept of Scale originally developed by Smith (1977). Two samples of 4-, 5-, and 6-year old children (N = 54 and N = 78) were administered the Maryland Preschool Self-Concept Scale - Revised (MPSS-R). In the first study, the measure was given twice, 3 to 5 weeks…