An Empirical Investigation of the Results of Two Different Test Development Strategies. Final Report for the Period March 15, 1981 - December 31, 1981.

Item banks offer a different approach to test development than that of the more traditional item specification method. This study was designed as an initial comparative investigation in the Area. Fourth grade math and reading tests were developed using both items written from item specifications and items drawn from an existing item bank. Four separate panels were formed to construct the tests and their development activities were documented for time and cost comparisons. Psychometric properties of the four tests were also compared although no consistent results between the two general methods were found. Finally, overall quality and content coverage of the tests were judged by classroom teachers. The report is divided into five major sections. The introduction includes a statement of the problem under investigation in the study, a review of related literature, and a statement of the current status of item banking in education. The second section, Design of the Study, describes the plans for the study. The third section, Conduct of the Study, explains how the study actually was conducted, showing when and how the actual implementation differed from the planned implementation. The fourth section presents Results of the Study. The last section discusses what has been learned from the research and talks about Implications for Future Test Development Efforts, which include (1) necessity of reading level indicator from reading passages; (2) the number of items available in a reading passage; and (3) information concerning the difficulty of items within the bank. A number of appendices include the materials developed as part of this study. (Author/GK)