A Comparison of Exposure Control Procedures in CATs Using the GPC Model

The current study compares the progressive-restricted standard error (PR-SE) exposure control method with the Sympson-Hetter, randomesque, and no exposure control (maximum information) procedures using the generalized partial credit model with fixed- and variable-length CATs and two item pools. The PR-SE method administered the entire item pool for all conditions; whereas the Sympson-Hetter and randomesque procedures did not administer 27%-28% and 14%, respectively, of item pool 1 and about 45%-50% and 27%-29% of item pool 2, respectively, of the items that were not administered. PR-SE also resulted in the smallest amount of mean item overlap averaged across replications. These results were obtained with similar measurement precision compared to the other methods while improving on the utilization of the item pools, except for very low theta levels (less than -2) for item pool 2, where a mismatch with the trait distribution occurs.