RESEARCH LIBRARY

Integrating Timing Considerations to Improve Testing Practices

This chapter addresses a different aspect of the use of timing data: it provides a framework for understanding how an examinee's use of time interfaces with time limits to impact both test performance and the validity of inferences made based on test scores. It focuses primarily on examinations that are administered as part of the physician licensure process.

Adv in Health Sci Educ 24, 141–150 (2019)

Research suggests that the three-option format is optimal for multiple choice questions (MCQs). This conclusion is supported by numerous studies showing that most distractors (i.e., incorrect answers) are selected by so few examinees that they are essentially nonfunctional. However, nearly all studies have defined a distractor as nonfunctional if it is selected by fewer than 5% of examinees.

Journal of Educational Measurement: Volume 55, Issue 4, Pages 582-594

This article proposes and evaluates a new method that implements computerized adaptive testing (CAT) without any restriction on item review. In particular, it evaluates the new method in terms of the accuracy on ability estimates and the robustness against test‐manipulation strategies. This study shows that the newly proposed method is promising in a win‐win situation: examinees have full freedom to review and change answers, and the impacts of test‐manipulation strategies are undermined.

Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 150-152

An introduction to a special issue of Quality Assurance in Education featuring papers based on presentations at a two-day international seminar on managing the quality of data collection in large-scale assessments.