Adapting Adaptive Testing: Using the MicroCAT Testing System in a Local School District

What is the rationale for adapting an existing testing system instead of developing your own? What are the limitations of MicroCAT? What has to be modified in order to meet local needs and to realize the potential of adaptive testing in the context of an existing testing system?     

Measuring Search Engine Quality

The effectiveness of twenty public search engines is evaluated using TREC-inspired methods and a set of 54 queries taken from real Web search logs. The World Wide Web is taken as the test collection and a combination of crawler and text retrieval system is evaluated. The engines are compared on a range of measures derivable from binary relevance judgments of the first seven live results returned. Statistical testing reveals a significant difference between engines and high intercorrelations between measures. Surprisingly, given the dynamic nature of the Web and the time elapsed, there is also a high correlation between results of this study and a previous study by Gordon and Pathak. For nearly all engines, there is a gradual decline in precision at increasing cutoff after some initial fluctuation. Performance of the engines as a group is found to be inferior to the group of participants in the TREC-8 Large Web task, although the best engines approach the median of those systems. Shortcomings of current Web search evaluation methodology are identified and recommendations are made for future improvements. In particular, the present study and its predecessors deal with queries which are assumed to derive from a need to find a selection of documents relevant to a topic. By contrast, real Web search reflects a range of other information need types which require different judging and different measures.     

Graduate Programs That Prepare Educational Measurement Specialists

What are typical requirements in graduate measurement programs? How d o programs in measurement and research methods differ?     

从第36届世界体操锦标赛看世界男子竞技体操运动的发展态势

采用调查访问、录像统计和资料研究等方法对第36届世界体操锦标赛男子单项前8名 运动员的比赛成绩、动作难度和完成情况进行了统计和比较研究。结果表明,体操单项比赛的竞 争呈现出垄断性;体操运动的发展呈现出竞争格局的多极性;规则对体操运动发展具有导向性。