Open AccessA COMPARISON OF SCHOOL MEAN ACHIEVEMENT SCORES WITH TWO ESTIMATES OF THE SAME SCORES OBTAINED BY THE ITEM‐SAMPLING TECHNIQUE 1
Author(s) -
Cahen Leonard S.,
Romberg Thomas A.,
Zwirner Walter
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
ets research bulletin series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2333-8504
pISSN - 0424-6144
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1970.tb00793.x
Subject(s) - test (biology) , statistics , mathematics , achievement test , sampling (signal processing) , stratified sampling , item analysis , mathematics education , standardized test , psychometrics , computer science , paleontology , filter (signal processing) , computer vision , biology
The study examined the accuracy of estimating test means for groups of twelfth‐grade students by the item‐sampling technique. The subjects used in the study were from 35 twelfth‐grade schools participating in the National Longitudinal Study of Mathematical Abilities. Half of the students in each school were assigned to a treatment condition where they took a complete 24‐item mathematics test on the first day of testing and took item‐sampled versions of the same test on the second day of testing. A second random group of students within each of the schools took the item‐sampled version of the mathematics test on day 2 but did not take the complete version of the mathematics test on day 1. There was no evidence to indicate that the taking of the complete 24‐item mathematics test influenced the performance on the item‐sampled version on the second day of testing. Reasonably close estimates of mean performance were obtained from the item‐sampling situation as compared to the means estimated from the conventional type of testing. The differences between the means estimated from conventional type testing and from item‐sampling testing were found to diminish as a function of the number of students tested in the school (square root transformation).