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Psychometrics Behind Computerized Adaptive Testing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Hua-Hua Chang
Hua-Hua Chang*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Hua-Hua Chang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 430 Psychology Building, 630 E. Daniel Street, M/C 716, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. E-mail: hhchang@illinois.edu
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Abstract

The paper provides a survey of 18 years’ progress that my colleagues, students (both former and current) and I made in a prominent research area in Psychometrics—Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT). We start with a historical review of the establishment of a large sample foundation for CAT. It is worth noting that the asymptotic results were derived under the framework of Martingale Theory, a very theoretical perspective of Probability Theory, which may seem unrelated to educational and psychological testing. In addition, we address a number of issues that emerged from large scale implementation and show that how theoretical works can be helpful to solve the problems. Finally, we propose that CAT technology can be very useful to support individualized instruction on a mass scale. We show that even paper and pencil based tests can be made adaptive to support classroom teaching.

Keywords

computerized adaptive testingmultidimensional CATsequential designmartingale theorya-stratified item selectionresponse timeconstraint managementCD-CAT
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

This article is based on the Presidential Address Hua-Hua Chang gave on June 25, 2013 at the 78th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society held in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

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