Knowledge and understanding of Asia: using a common item pool to obtain national estimates

A series of tests were developed to assess the proficiency of Australian Year 5 and Year 8 students in Asian Studies. This paper presents results of analyses that involved calibrating items distributed over 14 overlapping subtests, developed to cater for state and territory curricula and two year-levels. This allowed for state and year-level preferences to be selected from a common pool of 105 items. The project used common item anchoring to map all students and items onto a single, underpinning scale that was identified and interpreted using concurrent equating procedures and a skills audit of items.