Introduction

When standard-setting methods were initially developed, most of the assessments consisted of selected-response or multiple-choice items. These methods most often focused on judgements by experts on the probable item-level performance of examinees. For example, the Angoff (1971) standard-setting method asks panellists to estimate the probability that a randomly selected, hypothetical ‘minimally competent candidate (MCC)’ would be able to answer items from the test correctly. The Nedelsky (1954) method focuses the panellists' judgements on the alternatives comprising multiple-choice questions, asking panellists to identify those alternatives that the MCC would be able to eliminate as incorrect. The probability of an MCC getting the item correct is calculated as a function of the number of remaining options. Obviously, these kinds of methods will not work very well with ...