title: Incidence of measurement disturbances in the Dental Admission Quantitative Reasoning Test.
abstract: This paper describes the incidence of inconsistent person-response patterns in the Quantitative Reasoning Test (QRT), which is part of the Dental Admission Test (DAT) battery. using the Rasch person analysis approach to estimate the likelihood of a response pattern resulting from only two factors (the difficulty of the items and the ability of the person), a statistical profile of inconsistent response patterns was developed for a sample of students taking the DAT. The results of two test dates, April 1987 and October 1988, were included in this study. A random sample of 1,000 persons was drawn from each of these two test administrations. For the Fall 1988 sample, the person analysis was supplemented by a questionnaire designed to check the correspondence between a student's self-reported response behavior and the statistical profile provided by the person analysis. The analysis of the two samples of response patterns indicates a high incidence (50 percent+) of atypical response patterns on the test. This has serious implications for the admissions procedure since many of the atypical response patterns invalidate the standard scores reported for those students.
authors.affiliation: Division of Educational Measurements, American Dental Association, Stockton, NJ.
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.forename: A T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Kubiak
mesh_terms: D004497:Education, Dental; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D012647:Self-Assessment; D014481:United States