The eliminations and refinements illustrated above were carried out so that the new CAMERA instruments would comprise the fewest number of high-quality tasks needed to assign levels accurately and to provide adequate diagnostic information. Tasks were eliminated based on a number of criteria that impact the technical quality and administrative efficiency of an assessment. For example, some tasks were determined to be unnecessary because the same skills and strategies were adequately addressed across other tasks in the test. Eliminating such tasks helped to ensure that issues of length and redundancy would not have a negative impact on the administration time of the refined instruments. Other tasks were determined, over a period of usage, to be less than accurate indicators of the intended target LBS levels. Eliminating these tasks helped to improve the accuracy and integrity of the test results.
Further refinements involved streamlining many of the remaining tasks, as unnecessary items were eliminated. In some cases, two tasks of the same genre were conflated. In keeping with Essential Skills descriptors and criteria, several tasks were also re-designed to place a stronger emphasis on the separation of Reading and Document Use. Finally, new tasks were created to round out each CAMERA instrument and to ensure a balanced representation across task types and Essential Skills.
Because one of the goals of pilot testing was to ensure the equivalence of parallel forms A and B, the pilot materials were configured so that each subject attempted tasks from each of the forms. Approximately half of the group attempted tasks from form A followed by tasks from form B, while the other half attempted tasks from form B followed by tasks from form A.
The pilot sample consisted predominantly of individuals whose first language was English. In cases where English was the second language, subjects had a strong enough command of the language so that this was not a barrier to accessing the tasks and items.