A-to-Z Index

Research in Testing

Edited by Donna L. Street, Ashton C. Bishop, Ralph L. Benke Jr.

    197 pages, copyright 1990

One of the most important aspects of the educational process is the evaluation of student performance through testing. The purpose of this book is to bring together a collection of papers covering key testing issues. The reprinted articles have appeared in professional journals such as Journal of Education Research, Journal of Educational Measurement, The Accounting Review, Journal of Research and Development in Education, Journal of Accounting Education, and Review of Educational Measurement.

  • The Process of Testing: This section serves as an introduction to educational measurement. The paper in this section, which was written especially for this volume, discusses the importance of testing as a form of educational assessment.

  • Testing Formats: The articles in this section serve as an introduction to various testing formats such as multiple-choice, multiple true false, and essay. One paper discusses the relationship between test format and the types of knowledge, skills, and abilities that are measured.

  • Testing and Test Construction: This section begins with an article that reviews the educational literature on question arrangement. The order of questions on an examination can have an impact on the test scores of students. Two articles in this section explore the benefits of cumulative examinations.

  • Test Anxiety: This section is comprised of a paper that uses meta-analysis to integrate the results of 562 studies. The author concludes that test anxiety may have a detrimental impact on student test performance.

  • Computerized Testing: The article in this section describes an interactive computer-testing and record-keeping system which was implemented for a large self-paced university course.