Procedures for Selecting Items for Computerized Adaptive Tests

Abstract Many procedures have been developed for selecting the "best" items for a computerized adaptive test. There is a trend toward the use of adaptive testing in applied settings such as licensure tests, program entrance tests, and educational tests. It is useful to consider procedures for item selection and the special needs of applied testing settings to facilitate test design. The current study reviews several classical approaches and alternative approaches to item selection and discusses their relative merit. This study also describes procedures for constrained computerized adaptive testing (C-CAT) that may be added to classical item selection approaches to allow them to be used for applied testing, while maintaining the high measurement precision and short test length that made adaptive testing attractive to practitioners initially.