COMPARISON OF MULTISTAGE TESTS WITH COMPUTERIZED ADAPTIVE AND PAPER-AND-PENCIL TESTS

Abstract

Traditionally, the fixed-length linear paper-and-pencil (P&P) mode of administration has been the standard method of test delivery. With the advancement of technology, however, the popularity of administering tests using adaptive methods like computerized adaptive testing (CAT) and multistage testing (MST) has grown in the field of measurement in both theory and practice. In practice, several standardized tests have sections that include only set-based items. To date, there is no study in the literature that compares these testing procedures when a test is completely set-based under various item response theory (IRT) models. This study investigates the measurement precision of MST compared to CAT and compared to P&P tests for the one-, two-, and three-parameter logistic (1-, 2-, and 3PL) models when the test is completely set-based. Results showed that MST performed better for the 2- and 3PL models than an equivalent-length P&P test in terms of reliability and conditional standard error of measurement. In addition, findings showed that MST performed better for the 1- and 2PL models than for an equivalent-length CAT test. For the 3PL model, MST and CAT performed about the same.