The effect of the position of an item within a test on the item difficulty value. Paper presented at the annual meeting

An investigation of the effect on the difficulty value of an item due to position placement within a test was made. Using a 60-item operational test comprised of 5_Subtests, 60 items were placed as experimental items on a number_of Spiralled test forms in three different positions (first, middle, last) within the subtest composed of like items. Item data used resulted from Retch one-parameter item response calibrations. Variations among the mean Rasch difficulties lay well_within one standard deviation. Except for a few outliers, the item difficulty values graph within the 95 percent confidence limits for evaluating overall stability of the estimates. Thus, the consistency of these estimates support the notion that Rasch item parameters are not importantly affected by the position of an item. (Author) **********************************************************t************ Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document