Open AccessON THE VIABILITY OF SOME UNTESTABLE ASSUMPTIONS IN EQUATING EXAMS THAT ALLOW EXAMINEE CHOICE §
Author(s) -
Wang Xiangbo,
Wainer Howard,
Thissen David
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
ets research report series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.235
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2330-8516
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1993.tb01532.x
Subject(s) - equating , test (biology) , multiple choice , set (abstract data type) , psychology , differential (mechanical device) , social psychology , statistics , computer science , mathematics , significant difference , developmental psychology , paleontology , engineering , rasch model , biology , programming language , aerospace engineering
An increasingly popular test format allows examinees to choose which items they will answer from among a larger set. When examinee choice is allowed fairness requires that the different test forms thus formed be equated for their possible differential difficulty. For this equating to be possible we need to know how well examinees would have answered the items that they did not choose. In this paper we report the results of an experiment in which examinees are asked to choose among several multiple choice items but are then required to answer all of them. We conclude that allowing choice while having fair tests is only possible when it is unnecessary.