Admissible Probability Measurement Procedures

Abstract

Admissible probability measurement procedures utilize scoring systems with a very special property that guarantees that any student, at whatever level of knowledge or skill, can maximize his expected score if and only if he honestly reflects his degree-of-belief probabilities. Section 1 introduces the notion of a scoring system with the reproducing property and derives the necessary and sufficient condition for the case of a test item with just two possible answers. A method is given for generating a virtually inexhaustible number of scoring systems, both symmetric and asymmetric, with the reproducing property. A negative result concerning the existence of a certain subclass of reproducing scoring systems for the case of more than two possible answers is obtained. Whereas Section 1 is concerned with those instances in which the possible answers to a query are stated in the test itself, Section 2 is concerned with those instances in which the student himself must provide the possible answer(s). In this case, it is shown that a certain minor modification of a scoring system with the reproducing property yields the desired admissible probability measurement procedure.