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The Reliability of Speeded Tests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Harold Gulliksen*
Affiliation:
Educational Testing Service

Abstract

Some methods are presented for estimating the reliability of a partially speeded test without the use of a parallel form. The effect of these formulas on some test data is illustrated. Whenever an odd-even reliability is computed it is probably desirable to use one of the formulas noted in Section 2 of this paper in addition to the usual Spearman-Brown correction. Since the formulas given here involve the mean and the standard deviation of the “number unattempted score,” a method is given in Section 4 for computing this mean and standard deviation from item analysis data. If the item analysis data are available, this method will save considerable time as compared with rescoring answer sheets.

Type
Original Paper
Copyright
Copyright © 1950 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Dr. Robert L. Thorndike, Dr. A. Paul Horst, and Dr. William G. Mollenkopf for reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions regarding revision.

References

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