I.C.E. Exchange Preview — Decision by a Thousand Cuts: What Cut Score Selection Method Is Right for You?

Credentialing professionals have varying needs when it comes to cut score methods — so how does one determine which is right for their program?

At their I.C.E. Exchange session, psychometricians James Hellrung, MA, and Zachary Irwin, MS, ICE-CCP, will analyze six common cut score selection methods (Nedelsky, Modified Angoff percentage, Modified Angoff yes/no, Buek, Hofstee and Bookmark) — performed by the same group of experts — and reveal the resulting impacts. Read on to learn more about these psychometricians and get a preview of their session’s content.

What is your background in credentialing, and what excites you most about being in this field?

Hellrung has a master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology and roughly 12 years of experience within the credentialing industry. He has functioned both “in-house” and as a consultant. He is excited by the different methods for cut score selection that have evolved over time, and believes these innovations are often created by necessity but their variances often yield interesting promise.

Irwin also has a master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology and over 12 years of experience within the credentialing industry. He has functioned mostly as an external consultant with a wide variety of testing agencies and companies to develop credentialing examinations. He believes, like with any other issue that may arise, setting a valid standard for a particular examination often requires a more tailored approach to individual nuances and logistics of specific testing programs.

What are some of the topics attendees can look forward to hearing you speak on? Is there anything in particular you look forward to discussing with other panelists?

We will be talking about variations in cut score development. We have tried several different varieties, and methods we originally thought were pointless became very helpful as supplemental methods. Meanwhile, other methods that seem very similar yielded consistently different results.

We look forward to discussing others’ experiences with the various cut score methods. We hope to learn how some less popular or less viable methods can be utilized in new ways or as alternatives to more commonly used approaches when called for.

What highlights do you hope attendees will take away from your session?

We are looking forward to showing a graph of different projected cut scores yielded from different methods. We hope attendees leave the presentation with new ideas on how different methods may impact the selection of cut scores.