How Small the Number of Test Items Can Be for the Basis of Estimating the Operating Characteristics of the Discrete Responses to Unknown Test Items

摘要

The methods and approaches for estimating the operating characteristics of the discrete item responses without assuming any mathematical form have been developed and expanded. It has been made possible that, even if the test information function of a given test is not constant for the interval of ability of our interest, we use it as our Old Test. Our original Old Test consists of thirty-five test items with three item score categories each. Recently, we experimented upon the Simple Sum Procedure of the Conditional P.D.F. Approach which is combined with the Normal Approach Method, using each of three subtests of the original Old Test, and the results turned out to be successful. In the present study, we experiment on the same combination of approach and method by using several subtests of the original Old Test, which contain fifteen or less test items each, to find out if each of them can still be used as the Old Test, which maintains the accuracy of estimation reasonably high. (Author)