Augmentation procedures are designed to provide better estimates for a given test or subtest through the use of collateral information. The main purpose of this dissertation was to use Haberman's and Wainer's augmentation procedures on a large-scale, standardized achievement test to understand the relationship between reliability and correlation that exist to create the proportional reduction of mean squared error (PRMSE) statistic and to compare the practical effects of Haberman's augmentation procedure with the practical effects of Wainer's augmentation procedure.
In this dissertation, Haberman's and Wainer's augmentation procedures were used on a data set that consisted of a large-scale, standardized achievement test with tests in three different content areas, reading, language arts, and mathematics, in both 4th and 8th grade. Each test could be broken down into different content area subtests, between two and five depending on the content area. The data sets contained between 2,500 and 3,000 examinees for each test. The PRMSE statistic was used on the all of the data sets to evaluate two augmentation procedures, one proposed by Haberman and one by Wainer. Following the augmentation analysis, the relationship between the reliability of the subtest to be augmented and that subtest's correlation with the rest of the test was investigated using a pseudo-simulated data set, which consisted of different values for those variables. Lastly, the Haberman and Wainer augmentation procedures were used on the data sets and the augmented data was analyzed to determine the magnitude of the effects of using these augmentation procedures.
The main findings based on the data analysis and pseudo-simulated data analysis were as follows: (1) the more questions the better the estimates and the better the augmentation procedures; (2) there is virtually no difference between the Haberman and Wainer augmentation procedures, except for certain correlational relationships; (3) there is a significant effect of using the Haberman or Wainer augmentation procedures, however as the reliability increases, this effect lessens. The limitations of the study and possible future research are also discussed in the dissertation.