A theoretical study of two-stage testing

When items cannot be answered correctly by guessing, certain two-stage testing procedures are about as effective over the ability range of interest as the “best” up-and-down procedures studied previously. When answers can be guessed correctly 20 percent of the time, no two-stage procedure is found to match the “best” up-and-down procedures over this ability range. Feet-on-the-desk designs for two-stage procedures may produce poor results. This work was supported in part by contract N-00014-69-C-0017, project designation NR 150-303, between the Office of Naval Research and Educational Testing Service. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government.     

Item characteristic curves estimated without knowledge of their mathematical form—a confrontation of Birnbaum's logistic model

Item characteristic curves are estimated without restrictive assumptions about their mathematical form. The resulting curves are compared with estimates obtained under the assumption that all curves are of logistic form. Surprising agreement is found between the curves obtained by the two unrelated methods.This work was supported in part by contract Nonr-2752(00) between the Office of Naval Research and Educational Testing Service. Reproduction, translation, use and disposal in whole or in part by or for the United States Government is permitted.     

A significance test for the hypothesis that two variables measure the same trait except for errors of measurement

The likelihood-ratio significance test is derived for the hypothesis that after correction for attenuation two variables have a perfect correlation in the population from which the sample is drawn.The writer is indebted to Professor John W. Tukey for his valuable suggestions on an earlier draft.     

An application of confidence intervals and of maximum likelihood to the estimation of an examinee's ability

A mathematical definition of the theoretical relation between the examinee's actual responses to the test items and his “true ability” is selected. A maximum-likelihood solution is obtained for estimating the examinee's “true ability” from his responses to the items. The standard error of the maximum-likelihood estimate is obtained, its relation to the discriminating power of the test is pointed out, and some generalizations are drawn as to the optimum level of item difficulty. The Neyman-Pearson power function is applied to determine which of two psychological tests is the most powerful for the selection of “successful” examinees.     

Some relations between guttman's principal components of scale analysis and other psychometric theory

Guttman's principal components for the weighting system are the item scoring weights that maximize the generalized Kuder-Richardson reliability coefficient. The principal component for any item is effectively the same as the factor loading of the item divided by the item standard deviation, the factor loadings being obtained from an ordinary factor analysis of the item intercorrelation matrix.     

Reliability and predictive validity of the WISC-R with native-American Navajos

The reliability and predictive validity of the WISC-R was examined with a sample of 40 Navajo children. Internal consistency reliability estimates of WISC-R subtests as well as composites were found to be low for the Navajo subjects as compared with the reliability coefficients reported in the WISC-R manual. Correlation coefficients between the WISC-R subtests and those of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT) were low. Only the Block Design subtest correlated significantly with the WRAT-Spelling. The predictive validity of the WISC-R IQ scales was similarly found to be very low. Considering the nature and size of sample, cautions in generalizing these findings to other native-American populations are recommended.     

A strong true-score theory,with applications

A “strong” mathematical model for the relation between observed scores and true scores is developed. This model can be used

1. 1.
   To estimate the frequency distribution of observed scores that will result when a given test is lengthened.     

A note on the normal ogive or logistic curve in item analysis

It is common to assume that the proportion of correct answers to an item has a normal-ogive or logistic relationship to total test score. However, this is shown to be a mistaken and an undesirable notion.     

Social Categorization and the Influence of Drug Involvement on Drug Attitude Structures: Implications for Assessing Drug Use and Tolerance in the Workplace1

Theories of social categorization were used to generate hypotheses concerning the impact of drug involvement on the attitudes and knowledge structures that people use in making drug-related judgments. Data indicated that greater drug exposure tended to foster more complex knowledge structures for drugs and drug users as revealed by subjects’ perceptions of drug users, tolerance for drug use, and perceptions of drug seriousness. Basically, high drug involvement in terms of personal alcohol use and associating with illicit drug users was related to greater individuation of drug user types. Therefore, high-involved subjects, relative to low-involved individuals, were better able to discriminate between different drug user subtypes and drug user subtypes were more important to high-involved subjects when responding to drug-related survey items.