Janke Cohen – Schotanus, Groningen University
Workshop description
Teachers tend to favour absolute standards for tests because they like to ensure that students attained the required level of mastery. To set an absolute standard in a defensible way, expert panels are needed to determine the minimally acceptable level per item. However, panel procedures are often too costly for in-house tests. As a consequence, absolute minimum pass levels are usually established in the form of a fixed percentage of test questions that has to be answered correctly. Unfortunately, the use of fixed standards often causes substantial variation in pass/fail decisions, because of test difficulty. To correct for test difficulty, we developed the Cohen method in which the performance of the best students is used as point of reference.
During the workshop the Cohen method will be discussed and explored.