Achievement Tests

Any test that is designed to measure student learning in the context of an educational or training program can be called an achievement test. An achievement test comprises one to many test items. Each test item can be scored dichotomously (right or wrong) or with a rating scale, on which degrees of performance are determined by a judge, called a rater. Achievement test items are usually distinguished by the kind of response they generate: selected or constructed. The selected response item is often referred to as multiple choice because the test respondent chooses among the choices offered. The constructed response item requires that the respondent generate a written or oral response or a response in the form of a product or process. There is considerable variety in selected and constructed response test items.

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The publication Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing provides definitions relevant to achievement tests. This publication also offers many guidelines for the development and validation of achievement tests. Another useful, comprehensive reference about the development and validation of achievement tests is the Handbook of Test Development.

The length of an achievement test varies according to many factors, all of which relate to validity and the intended purpose of the test. One of the most important factors is reliability. Longer tests tend to yield more reliable scores. If an achievement test represents a domain of identifiable knowledge and skills, then it should be a representative sample from this domain. Reliability and adequate sampling of content are two major types of evidence that support the validity of an achievement test score interpretation or use.

Another useful distinction is the difference between a test and a quiz. A quiz is shorter than a test and measures only several student learning objectives, whereas a test is longer than a quiz and measures many student learning objectives. Both test and quiz, as distinguished here, constitute a measure of student achievement, but the distinction is in the amount of coverage of the domain or content to be learned. Thus, any quiz is also an achievement test in this broader sense.

The term assessment is often used synonymously with the term achievement test. Strictly speaking, the two are not the same. Assessment is a judgment, usually by a teacher, about how well a student has learned and what a student needs to learn. An assessment should be based on valid information, which includes results of achievement tests and other information collected during a semester or school year or in a training program. Thus, an achievement test that is used for an assessment purpose may be given the name assessment because the test information is used for an assessment of student learning.

What Is Achievement?

Achievement is generally considered change in cognitive behavior that we attribute to learning, which can occur both within and outside a planned learning experience, such as a course, class, or training. What students learn can be thought of as existing in one of two related domains. Each domain has a large collection of test items that represent it.

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