A Comparison of Adaptive Sequential, and Conventional Testing Strategies for Mastery Decisions.

Two procedures for making mastery decisions with variable length tests and a conventional mastery testing procedure were compared in Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation varied the characteristics of the item pool used for testing and the maximum test length allowed. The procedures were compared in terms of the mean test length needed to make a decision, the validity of the decisions made by each procedure, and the types of classification errors made by each procedure. Both of the variable test length procedures were found to result in important reductions in mean test length from the conventional test length. The Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT) procedure resulted in greater test length reductions, on the average, than the Adaptive Mastery Testing (AMT) procedure. However, the AMT procedure resulted both in more valid mastery decisions and in more balanced error rates than the SPRT procedure under all conditions. In addition, the AMT procedure produced the best combination of test length and validity. (Author)