Placement Validity Report: 1997/98 VALIDITY OF THE IUPUI PLACEMENT TEST SCORES FOR COURSE PLACEMENT: 1997-1998

2 Executive Summary This annual report addresses a variety of issues regarding the undergraduate placement tests that are mandated for all entering students at IUPUI. Several improvements to the placement testing process were implemented by the academic departments recently, cutoff score modifications to the computerized adaptive math placement test and an experimental procedure for the computerized assessment of writing samples to be used with the high school testing activities (Shermis, Mzumara, Harrington, & Olson, 1998). Moreover, beginning with last year's report, new graphs have been incorporated that indicate the probability of success for a student who achieves a given placement test score (Noble & Sawyer, 1997). Our hope is that these new interpretational aids will provide some additional help to counselors and other academic advisors looking to use the placement tests as one source of information in guiding the student to an appropriate course. The evaluation of the computerized adaptive math test involved samples drawn from fall of 1997. An adaptive test is one that conforms to the ability level of the examinee. Several studies have shown this type of test to be just as reliable as the older non-adaptive test, even though it averages to be 30-50% shorter. Our own exit surveys also suggest that students like the adaptive tests because they are neither too difficult or too easy. Moreover, the computerized adaptive test, which consists of an item bank of 168 items, addresses security concerns in that each student essentially takes a different form of the test. The placement validity coefficients for this test, calculated on the relationship between the placement test results and a score on a common final, averaged r = .38 which makes it a very useful predictor and a 3 significant improvement over the last several years. The Department of Mathematical Sciences, working with the Testing Center, recently made recommendations to improve the predictive validity of the test, especially for higher level courses. Implementation of these recommendations began in mid-fall 1997 and this work is currently underway. Placement graphs for mathematics are included in this report. The Indiana-Purdue Computerized Reading Test is modeled after the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, a nationally recognized assessment that is used for placement purposes. This test has been evaluated on a number of psychometric dimensions and has been demonstrated to have good reliability and validity (Shermis, Wolting, & Lombard, 1996). The advantage of the computerized test is that it can …