Toward the Development of Cancer Literacy Assessment Tools

Background: This study represented the first that documents the development of breast and cervical cancer literacy assessments that can be administered orally by laypersons. Methods: Critical indicators of cancer literacy were identified through a review of pertinent literature and interviews with ethnically diverse women. The pilot-test consisted of a 29- question assessment for language appropriateness. A score of 75% was established as the threshold for functional cancer literacy. Results: The assessment tools demonstrated a high level of internal consistency. Paired t-test analysis of pre- and post-intervention tests showed that the instrument was sensitive to changes in literacy of breast and cervical cancer as well as improvements in functional cancer literacy. Conclusion: The analysis demonstrated that the instrument is a reliable and valid indicator of breast and cervical cancer literacy. These assessment instruments can provide researchers and educators a tool to measure functional cancer literacy that can enhance their ability to tailor appropriate health interventions and promotions

Optimal item pool design for computerized adaptive tests with polytomous items using GPCM

Abstract Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a testing procedure with advantages in improving measurement precision and increasing test efficiency. An item pool with optimal characteristics is the foundation for a CAT program to achieve those desirable psychometric features. This study proposed a method to design an optimal item pool for tests with polytomous items using the generalized partial credit model (G-PCM). It extended a method for approximating optimality with polytomous items being described succinctly for the purpose of pool design. Optimal item pools were generated using CAT simulations with and without practical constraints of content balancing and item exposure control. The performances of the item pools were evaluated against an operational item pool. The results indicated that the item pools designed with stratification based on discrimination parameters performed well with an efficient use of the less discriminative items within the target accuracy levels. The implications for developing item pools are also discussed

The Interaction of Values and Validity Assessment: Does a Test's Level of Validity Depend on a Researcher's Values?

multidimensional item response theory, reference composite, test development, validity,

The difficulty of test items that measure more than one ability

Many test items require more than one ability to obtain a correct response. This article proposes a multidimensional index of item difficulty that can be used with items of this type. The proposed index describes multidimensional item difficulty as the direction in the multidimensional space in which the item provides the most information and the distance in that direction to the most informative point. The multidimensional difficulty is derived for a particular item response theory model and an example of its application is given using the ACT Mathematics Usage Test

Test construction in the 1990s: Recent approaches every psychologist should know

ACT The article summarizes the current state of the art in test construction and contrasts it with previous conceptual models, some of which are wrong or misleading. In particular, new methodologies for item selection and review arc presented as well as current thinking on the specification of technical characteristics of tests. The construction and interpretation of psychological tests has been a standard part of the curriculum for psychology majors and students in graduate programs in psychology since the days of James McKeen Catell. However, information on the construction of psychological tests that appears in psychological and educational training curricula and techniques that are put in practice as part of psychological research are often not state of the art, mainly because it takes some time for information to diffuse from the research literature and from the internal documents of testing organizations to the sources used for instruction. This diffusion process is probably no worse in psychology than it is in other areas-consider how long it has taken advances made by the space program to influence everyday life. Automobile technology is quite different now from the way it was 20 years ago as a result of advances in computer technology and materials from the space program, but the changes took quite a long time to be put in place. The purpose of this article is to identify some important changes that have taken place in the process of test development over the past 20 years. The changes are highlighted by contrasting the descriptions of the process from sources spanning the period since the 1930s, starting with a book on intelligence testing hy To provide some structure to the article, the test development process has been divided into four parts. They include descriptions of (a) content, (b) statistical specifications, (c) item selection, and (d) test review processes. Although these topics are not truly mutually exclusive, they do provide a relatively concise structure for discussing test construction practice

Development and Application of a Multivariate Logistic Latent Trait Model

During the last twenty years, what Bock and Wood (1971) have called modern test theory has slowly developed from the work of Lord (1952) on the normal ogive model, Lazarsfeld (1959) on latent trait analysis, and Birnbaum (1958) and Rasch (1960) on logistic models of test behavior. Each of these models is based on a hypothesized relationship between test responses and some hypothetical latent measure of ability, as opposed to the traditional theory as presented by Gulliksen (1950), which assumes observed scores are a linear combination of true and error components