Errors of Measurement and Standard Setting in Mastery Testing

Abstract

A number of studies have estimated the dependabil ity of domain-referenced mastery tests for a fixed cut off score. Other studies have estimated the dependa bility of judgments about the cutoff score. Each of these two types of dependability introduces error. Brennan and Lockwood (1980) analyzed the two kinds of errors together but assumed that the two sources of error were uncorrelated. This paper extends that analy sis of the total error in estimates of the difference be tween the domain score and the cutoff score to allow for covariance between the two types of error.