Authoring

Posted by John Kleeman Tests and exams are used for serious purposes and have significant impact on people’s lives. If they are translated wrongly, it can result in distress. As a topical illustration, poor translation of an important medical admissions test in India was the subject of a major law... Read More

Posted by John Kleeman Content validity is one of the most important criteria on which to judge a test, exam or quiz. This blog post explains what content validity is, why it matters and how to increase it when using competence tests and exams within regulatory compliance and other work... Read More

Posted by John Kleeman [repost from February 8, 2017] How do you keep a certification exam up to date when the technology it is assessing is changing rapidly? Certifications in new technologies like software-as-a-service and cloud solutions have some specific challenges. The nature of the technology usually means that questions... Read More

Posted by John Kleeman We think of the Internet as being very young, but one of the pioneers in using the Internet for assessments is about to retire. Paul Roberts, the developer of the world’s first commercial, Internet assessment software is retiring in March. I thought readers might like to... Read More

Posted by April Barnum In my previous article, I gave an overview of the six authoring steps that can help you achieve trustable assessment results. Each step contributes to the next and useful analysis of results is only possible if all six steps are done effectively. Now, let’s dig into... Read More

Posted by April Barnum I recently met with customers and the topic of authoring trustworthy assessments and getting back trustable results was a top concern. No matter what they were assessing on, everyone wants results that are trustable, meaning that they are both valid and reliable. The reasons were similar,... Read More

Posted by Chloe Mendonca Item Analysis is probably the most important tool for increasing test effectiveness.  In order to write items that accurately and reliably measure what they’re intended to, you need to examine participant responses to each item. You can use this information to improve test items and identify unfair... Read More

Posted by John Kleeman My previous post Satisficing: Why it might as well be a four-letter word explained that satisficing on a survey is when someone answers survey questions adequately but not as well as they can. Typically they just fill in questions without thinking too hard. As a commenter... Read More

Posted by Julie Delazyn Whether you work with low-stakes assessments, small-scale classroom assessments or large-scale, high-stakes assessment, understanding and applying some basic principles of item development will greatly enhance the quality of your results. What began as a popular 11-part blog series has morphed into a white paper: Managing Item... Read More

Posted by John Kleeman Online proctoring was a hot-button topic at Questionmark’s annual Users Conference. And though we’ve discussed the pros and cons in this blog and even offered an infographic highlighting online versus test-center proctoring, many interesting questions arose during the Ensuring Exam Integrity with Online Proctoring session I... Read More