Chapter One
Optimal Design in
Educational Testing
Steven Buyske
Rutgers University, Department of Statistics, 110 Frelinghuysen Rd,
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019, USA
1.1 Introduction
Formal job testing of individuals goes back more than 3000 years, while formal
written tests in education go back some 500 years. Although the earliest paper on
optimal design in statistics appeared at about the same time as multiple choice tests
appeared, at the beginning of the twentieth century, optimal design theory was first
applied to issues arising in standardized testing 40 years ago.
Van der Linden and Hambleton (1997b) suggest thinking of a test as a collection
of small experiments (that is, the questions, or items) for which the observations are
the test-taker's responses. These observations allow one to infer a measurement of
the test-taker's proficiency in the subject of the test. As with most experimental
settings, the application of optimal design principles can offer great gains in
efficiency, most obviously in shorter tests. Since the cost of producing items can
easily exceed US$100 per item, more ef ... read full excerpt from Applied Optimal Designs ebook
