Overview of couplet scoring in content-focused physics assessments

Content-focused research-based assessment instruments typically use items (i.e., questions) as the unit of assessment for scoring, reporting, and validation. Couplet scoring employs an alternative unit of assessment called a couplet, which is essentially an item viewed and scored through the lens of a specific assessment objective. With couplet scoring, a single item may have more than one assessment objective and therefore more than one couplet and thus more than one score. We outline the components of traditional item scoring, discuss couplet scoring and its benefits, and use both a recently developed content research-based assessment instrument and an existing one to ground our discussion.