Test conditions where question sampling may be helpful

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A Division of Undergraduate Education at Penn State.

For testing that spans more than one day, some use of question sampling is advised. This strategy involves the creation of a large number of similar versions of a test by using software to randomly select questions for each form of a test. For example, the first question in the test is determined by which of two or three questions in a group is randomly selected at the time the test is created by the testing software system. If this practice is implemented for most or all of the questions in a test, the tests that are delivered to students will have many different combinations of questions and as a consequence students will have great difficulty in effectively sharing information about the specific questions on the test.