Over the past several decades, computerized adaptive testing (CAT) has profoundly changed the administration of large-scale aptitude tests, state-wide achievement tests, professional licensure exams, and health outcome measures. While many challenges of CAT have been successfully addressed due to the continual efforts of researchers in the field, there are still many remaining, longstanding challenges that have yet to be resolved. This symposium will begin with three presentations, each of which provides a sound solution to one of the unresolved challenges. They are (1) item calibration when responses are “missing not at random” from CAT administration; (2) online calibration of new items when person traits have non-ignorable measurement error; (3) establishing consistency and asymptotic normality of latent trait estimation when allowing item response revision in CAT. In addition, this symposium also features innovative applications of CAT. In particular, there is emerging interest in using cognitive diagnostic CAT to monitor and detect learning progress (4th presentation). Last but not least, the 5th presentation illustrates the power of multidimensional polytomous CAT that permits rapid identification of hospitalized patients’ rehabilitative care needs in health outcomes measurement. We believe this symposium covers a wide range of interesting and important topics in CAT.

Session Video