Three-Element Item Selection Procedures for Multiple Forms Assembly: An Item Matching Approach

• In Event: Test Form Development and Item Exposure

Abstract

Multiple forms assembly problems are classified as NP-hard and their computation time increase exponentially as the problem size grows. This study proposed two item selection methods (R-MD-B and R-R-B) by incorporating a flexible content balancing method with an item selection heuristic to construct multiple test forms based on a seed test. The results were compared with two modified versions of Armstrong, Jones, and Wu’s (1992) heuristics (R-MD-R and R-R-R) and a simultaneous version of the mixed integer programming (MIP) method. It is expected that all four heuristics methods yielded comparable results to the MIP method in terms of item information functions, test characteristic curves and content coverage.

Author

• Pei-Hua Chen, National Chiao Tung University