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
- 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
- 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