Passage-Dependence of Items Designed to Measure the Ability to Identify the Main Ideas of Paragraphs: Implications for Validity

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Abstract
Items from a standardized reading test designed to measure the ability to identify the main ideas of paragraphs were administered without the associated paragraphs. The two samples consisted of graduate students and inner-city high-school students. A random half of each sample was given brief, general directions for answering the items in the absence of the passages, and the other half was given more extensive directions for answering the items in the absence of the passages. The different directions did not have a significant effect on performance, but both halves of the two samples answered a substantial number of items correctly. An index of passage-dependence was computed for each item, and the index values obtained from the responses of the graduate students and high-school students were substantially correlated.

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