Introduction - Professional Testing

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Test Reliability1Professional Testing Inc. PTI 2006IntroductionReliability is one of the most important elements of test quality. It has to do with theconsistency, or reproducibility, of an examinee's performance on the test. For example, ifyou were to administer a test with high reliability to an examinee on two occasions, youwould be very likely to reach the same conclusions about the examinee's performance bothtimes. A test with poor reliability , on the other hand, might result in very different scores forthe examinee across the two test administrations. If a test yields inconsistent scores, it maybe unethical to take any substantive actions on the basis of the test. There are severalmethods for computing test reliability including test-retest reliability , parallel formsreliability, decision consistency, internal consistency, and interrater reliability . For manycriterion-referenced tests decision consistency is often an appropriate of ReliabilityTest-Retest ReliabilityTo estimate test-retest reliability , you must administer a test form to a single group ofexaminees on two separate occasions.

Test Reliability 3 Professional Testing Inc. © PTI 2006 Summary Test reliability is the aspect of test quality concerned with whether or not a test produces

  Introduction, Reliability