AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CONTEXT EFFECT IN MATRIX SAMPLING1

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Practical use of the matrix sampling (i.e. item sampling) technique requires the assumption that an examinee's response to an item is independent of the context in which the item occurs. This assumption was tested experimentally by comparing the responses of examinees to a population of items with the responses of examinees to item samples. Matrix sampling mean and variance estimates for verbal, quantitative, and attitude tests were used as dependent variables to test for differences between the “context” and “out‐of‐context” groups. The estimates obtained from both treatment groups were also compared with actual population values. No significant differences were found between treatments on matrix sample parameter estimates for any of the three types of tests.