HONEYCOMB STRUCTURE FOR AUTOMATED POOL ASSEMBLY OF TEST QUESTIONS FOR TEST ADMINISTRATION

An automated method of assembling computerized adaptive test (CAT) pools of test items is provided. A plurality of item bins is created. Each item bin is associated with a different content domain, and each item bin includes only items associated with its respective content domain. The items in each item bin are grouped into a plurality of individual cells, wherein each item is placed in only one of the individual cells, and each cell includes a plurality of items which span a range of difficulty levels. The grouping is performed by linear programming at the individual cell level. One or more pools of items are assembled from a random selection of cells across the item bins, wherein there is only one cell for each item bin. The CAT is administered by randomly assigning each test taker to one of the pools of items.