Some Considerations in Maintaining Adaptive Test Item Pools

摘要

The construction of parallel editions of conventional tests for purposes of test security while maintaining score comparability has always been a recognized and difficult problem in psychometrics and test construction. The introduction of new modes of testing, e.g., adaptive testing, changes the nature of the problem but does not make it disappear. Items in adaptive test item pools may become overused and require replacement. However, in order to insure score comparability, important characteristics of the pool must remain constant. Three methods of selecting candidate new items and three methods of identifying items for replacement are developed and compared with each other and with previous method through a simulation study. Keywords: Adaptive testing; Online calibration; Item pool refreshment; Parallel adaptive tests; Test construction(psychology). (sdw)