10.6 Creating new instruments for D-score

Extending the D-score to other instruments has the side-effect of enlarging the item bank with useful items. As more and more data feed into the item bank, assessment of already present milestones may become more precise.

The enlarged and improved item bank then may act as the fundamental resource for creating instruments for particular settings. For example, if the interest is on finding the most advanced children, we may construct a difficult test that will separate the good and the best. Alternatively, we can use the item bank to create and administer computerized adaptive tests (Wainer et al. 2000; Jacobusse and van Buuren 2007), a sequential method that selects the next milestone based on the previous test outcome.

Our ongoing work will explore the conceptual and technical challenges, and propose an integrated approach to support instrument construction and validation.