Score Comparability Issues with At-Home Testing and How to Address Them

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, at-home testing has become a popular delivery mode in many testing programs. When programs offer at-home testing to expand their service, the score comparability between test takers testing remotely and those testing in a test center is critical. This article summarizes statistical procedures that could be used to evaluate potential mode effects at both the item level and the total score levels. Using operational data from a licensure test, we also compared linking relationships between the test center and at-home testing groups to determine the reporting score conversion from a subpopulation invariance perspective.