The reading comprehension items for the Nelson Reading Skills Test, a revision of a widely used standardized reading test, were administered to several hundred fourth- and sixth-grade students in order to determine whether the student's ability to answer correctly actually depended on his comprehension of the accompanying passage. All the field-tested items were divided into nine booklets, which contained one normal reading comprehension subtest and one subtest with only the questions. An index of passage dependency was computed for each item, and the index was used to help the authors locate items that were weak. The index also indicated the effect of passage dependency on skill categories. (Author/BW)