Abstract
For students who took college admissions tests multiple times, institutions may have different policies of utilizing the multiple sets of test scores for decision making. For example, some may use the most recent, and others may use the average, the highest, or even the super composite scores by combining the highest subject test scores from each administration. Previous research on these different score use policies mainly focused on their predictive validity with little discussion about their psychometric properties. Through both theoretical and empirical investigations, this study showed how the bias, the standard error of measurement, and the reliability of scores for these different policies compare with each other and how these properties change for each score type as the number of test events increased.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
ACT (2014). The ACT® Technical Manual. Iowa City, IA: ACT, Author.
ACT (2018). The ACT® Test User Handbook for Educators. Iowa City, IA: Author.
Boldt, R. F. (1977). Evaluation of three methods for treating repeaters’ scores. Princeton, NJ: Law School Admission Council.
Boldt, R. F., Centra, J. A., & Courtney, R. G. (1986). The validity of various methods of treating multiple SAT® scores. New York, NY: The College Board.
Chen, C., & Tyler, C. (1999). Accurate approximation to the extreme order statistics of Gaussian samples. Communications in Statistics—Simulation and Computation, 28(1), 177–188.
Linn, R. L. (1977). On the treatment of multiple scores for law school admission test repeaters. Princeton, NJ: Law School Admission Council.
Lord, F. M., & Novick, M. R. (1968). Statistical theories of mental test scores. Reading MA: Addison-Welsley Publishing Company.
Mattern, K., Radunzel, J., Bertling, M., & Ho, A. (2018). How should colleges treat multiple admissions test scores? Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 37(3), 11–23.
Patterson, B., Mattern, K., & Swerdzewski, P. (2012). Are the best scores the best scores for predicting college success? Journal of College Admission, 217, 34–45.
Roszkowski, M., & Spreat, S. (2016). Retaking the SAT may boost scores but this doesn’t hurt validity. Journal of the National College Testing Association, 2(1), 1–16.
Spearman, C. (1904). The proof and measurement of association between two things. The American Journal of Psychology, 15(1), 72–101.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Li, D. (2019). Psychometric Properties of the Highest and the Super Composite Scores. In: Wiberg, M., Culpepper, S., Janssen, R., González, J., Molenaar, D. (eds) Quantitative Psychology. IMPS IMPS 2017 2018. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 265. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01310-3_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01310-3_29
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01309-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01310-3
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)