Evaluation of the 0.3 logits screening criterion in common item equating

A number of state assessment programs that employ Rasch-based common item equating procedures estimate the equating constant with only those common items for which the two tests' Rasch item difficulty parameter estimates differ by less than 0.3 logits. The results of this study presents evidence that this practice results in an inflated probability of incorrectly dropping an item from the common item set if the number of examinees is small (e.g., 500 or less) and the reverse if the number of examinees is large (e.g., 5000 or more). An asymptotic experiment-wise error rate criterion was algebraically derived. This same criterion can also be applied to the Mantel-Haenszel statistic. Bonferroni test statistics were found to provide excellent approximations to the (asymptotically) exact test statistics.