CONTROLLING ITEM EXPOSURE CONDITIONAL ON ABILITY IN COMPUTERIZED ADAPTIVE TESTING

The interest in the application of large-scale adaptive testing for se cure rests has served to focus attention on issues that arise when the oretical advances are made operational. One such issue is that of ensu ring item and pool security in the continuous testing environment made possible by the computerized administration of a test, as opposed to the more periodic testing environment typically used for linear paper- and-pencil tests. This article presents a new method of controlling th e exposure rate of items conditional on ability level in this continuo us testing environment. The properties of such conditional control on the exposure rates of items, when used in conjunction with a particula r adaptive testing algorithm, are explored through studies with simula ted data.