TY - JOUR
T1 - Three-Element Item Selection Procedures for Multiple Forms Assembly
T2 - An Item Matching Approach
AU - Chen, Pei-Hua
PY - 2016/3/1
Y1 - 2016/3/1
N2 - In educational measurement, building multiple alternate test forms is usually highly desirable in practice. Test assembly problems are classified as NP-hard (Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard) problems, and their computation time increases exponentially as the problem size grows. The purpose of this study was to construct parallel forms item-by-item based on a seed test, using two proposed item selection heuristic methods (random item sequence assigned to maximum distance form with content balance [R-MD-B] and random item sequence assigned to random form with content balancing [R-R-B]) incorporating a flexible content balancing method. The results were compared with two modified versions of the Armstrong, Jones, and Wu heuristics (random item sequence assigned to maximum distance form with Armstrong’s replacement [R-MD-R] and random item sequence assigned to random form with Armstrong’s replacement [R-R-R]) and two models incorporating mixed integer programming (MIP) methods. The results showed that the R-MD-B and R-R-B methods yielded results comparable with the two MIP methods with less computation time in terms of the item information functions, test characteristic curves, and content coverage. The results also showed that R-MD-B and R-R-B can be extended to handle test assembly constraints in practical settings.
AB - In educational measurement, building multiple alternate test forms is usually highly desirable in practice. Test assembly problems are classified as NP-hard (Non-deterministic Polynomial-time hard) problems, and their computation time increases exponentially as the problem size grows. The purpose of this study was to construct parallel forms item-by-item based on a seed test, using two proposed item selection heuristic methods (random item sequence assigned to maximum distance form with content balance [R-MD-B] and random item sequence assigned to random form with content balancing [R-R-B]) incorporating a flexible content balancing method. The results were compared with two modified versions of the Armstrong, Jones, and Wu heuristics (random item sequence assigned to maximum distance form with Armstrong’s replacement [R-MD-R] and random item sequence assigned to random form with Armstrong’s replacement [R-R-R]) and two models incorporating mixed integer programming (MIP) methods. The results showed that the R-MD-B and R-R-B methods yielded results comparable with the two MIP methods with less computation time in terms of the item information functions, test characteristic curves, and content coverage. The results also showed that R-MD-B and R-R-B can be extended to handle test assembly constraints in practical settings.
KW - heuristic algorithm
KW - item response theory
KW - parallel forms
KW - seed test
KW - test assembly
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84957808370&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0146621615605307
DO - 10.1177/0146621615605307
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84957808370
SN - 0146-6216
VL - 40
SP - 114
EP - 127
JO - Applied Psychological Measurement
JF - Applied Psychological Measurement
IS - 2
ER -