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An Approximation of the K out N Reliability of a Test, and a Scoring Procedure for Determining which Items an Examinee Knows

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Rand R. Wilcox
Rand R. Wilcox*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
*
Reprint requests should be addressed to Rand R. Wilcox, Department of Psychology, SGM621, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089.
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Abstract

Consider any scoring procedure for determining whether an examinee knows the answer to a test item. Let xi = 1 if a correct decision is made about whether the examinee knows the i th item; otherwise xi = 0. The k out of n reliability of a test is ρk = Pr (Σxi ≥k). That is, ρk is the probability of making at least k correct decisions for a typical (randomly sampled) examinee. This paper proposes an approximation of ρk that can be estimated with an answer-until-correct test. The paper also suggests a scoring procedure that might be used when ρk is judged to be too small under a conventional scoring rule where it is decided an examinee knows if and only if the correct response is given.

Keywords

latent class models
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 211 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Psychometric Society

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