The Revised Dutch Rating System for Test Quality

This article describes the 1997 revision of the Dutch Rating System for Test Quality used by the Committee of Test Affairs of the Dutch Association of Psychologists (COTAN). The revised rating system evaluates the quality of a test on 7 criteria: Theoretical basis and the soundness of the test development procedure, Quality of the testing materials, Comprehensiveness of the manual, Norms, Reliability, Construct validity, and Criterion validity. For each criterion, a checklist with a number of items is provided. Some items (for each criterion at least 1) are so-called key questions, which check whether certain minimum conditions are met. If a key question is rated negative, the rating for that criterion will automatically be "insufficient." To enhance a uniform interpretation of the items by the raters and to explain the system to test users and test developers, comment sections provide detailed information on rating and weighting the items. Once the items have been rated, the final grades (insufficient, sufficient, or good) for the 7 criteria are established by means of weighting rules.