It is important to estimate the number of examinees who reached a test item, because item difficulty is defined by the number who answered correctly divided by the number who reached the item. A new method is presented and compared to the previously used definition of three categories of response to an item: (1) answered; (2) omitted--a nonresponse followed, immediately or eventually, by a marked item in the same section; or (3) not reached--a nonresponse when no subsequent item in the section is answered. This practice makes it impossible to determine that the last item of a section was omitted, and may result in a biased (too easy) estimate of difficulty. The proposed method uses Tukey's Flog, a logistic transformation which enables linear extrapolation to plot the proportion of examinees who reach an item against the item number. Using 25 items from the Scholastic Aptitude Test as an example, 421 more examinees reached the last item than previously estimated, changing the item difficulty from 17 to 17.5. This proposed modest change appears to improve measurement accuracy, particularly when the estimated item difficulty must remain stable despite changes in item position. (GDC)