Concern about passing those examinees who should pass, and retaining those who need remedial work, is one problem related to criterion-referenced testing. This paper deals with one aspect of that problem. When determining how many items to include on a criterion-referenced test, practitioners must resolve various non-statistical issues before a…

When determining criterion-referenced test length, problems of guessing are shown to be more serious than expected. A new method of scoring is presented that corrects for guessing without assuming that guessing is random. Empirical investigations of the procedure are examined. Test length can be substantially reduced. (Author/CM)

A problem of considerable importance in certain educational settings is determining how many items to include on a mastery test. Applying ranking and selection procedures, a solution is given which includes as a special case all existing single-stage, non-Bayesian solutions based on a strong true-score model. (Author/JKS)