Effects and Underlying Mechanisms of Self-Adapted Testing

Undergraduates participated in 3 experiments related to self-adapted testing. Experiment 1 demonstrated that, in comparison with computerized adaptive testing, self-adapted testing reduced the influence of anxiety on performance but took longer and was less efficient. Experiment 2 indicated that benefits of self-adapted testing cannot be attributed solely to item ordering. Instead, active choice of item difficulty seems to be necessary. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the provision of feedback increased the efficiency of the test but had no effect on estimates of ability derived. The potential of self-adapted testing to reduce the influence of extraneous sources of variation in test performance is discussed.