Writing Test Items Scientifically

Reviews the book, A Technology for Test-Item Writing by Gale H. Roid and Thomas M. Haladyna (1982). It is the authors' belief that item writing has been more an art than a science and that procedures are now available to improve substantially the writing of test items. This item-writing technology is seen by the authors who provided schemes that placed constraints on how the items for a given test could be written. Once an item-limiting or item-generating framework for a particular achievement area or aptitude is in place, the actual production of the individual items becomes more a mechanical process than a creative enterprise. The book is elementary in that it presupposes naive item writers as one of its audiences. It is also nonmathematical, for only one formula is presented. The book is reportive rather than insightful, cursory rather than penetrating. Two features that lend value to the book are its numerous examples and summaries, which are likely to improve comprehensibility, and its excellent references, which draw on works in a number of fields of application. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)