An Inquiry Concerning the Use of Item Sampling as a Method to Reduce Testing Time

Abstract

This study employed the procedure of item sampling to reduce the time expenditure of participants when responding to a questionnaire concerned with the implementation of an innovative elementary school project. Approximately fifty student teachers and forty-two regular classroom teachers responded to one of two forms of the questionnaire. There was a total of 103 multiple-choice questions on each form with thirteen questions being common to both forms (a total of 193 different questions) . Participation time was reduced from two hours to one hour for each participant. A comparison between the perception of student teachers on form A and B using the common items showed no significant differences; the same result held for the classroom teachers. However, there were differences between the perceptions of student teachers and the classroom teachers. These data were used to estimate and compare the perceptions of both groups for all items for all participants.