A Survey on Problem Formulations and (Meta)Heuristic-Based Solutions in Automated Assembly of Parallel Test Forms

Abstract

Parallel test forms are ubiquitous in the educational, aptitude, achievement, and licensure testing. The problem of automated assembling of parallel test forms has been extensively explored for almost 40 years. Many different mathematical models of the problem formulations and a plenty of different solutions have emerged over the last two decades, indicating that the problem has matured. However, its investigation is still challenging, especially today, when the importance of distance learning and remote knowledge testing is rapidly growing. The diversity of proposed approaches originated notably from the variety of scientific fields involved such as psychometrics, applied mathematics, operations research, and artificial intelligence. Majority of solutions of the problem are (meta)heuristics-based, since they consider the problem as a combinatorial optimization problem which is NP-hard. In this paper, a comprehensive review of this research field, referring to related works since 1985, is conducted. Problem formulations and solutions of the problem are separately classified. Possible avenues of future research are pointed out.