A popular design in large-scale educational assessments is the balanced incomplete block design. The design assumes that the item pool is split into a set of blocks of items that are assigned to assessment booklets. This paper shows how the technique of 0-1 linear programming can be used to calculate a balanced incomplete block design. Several…

This paper describes a methodology, called Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS), designed to identify major patterns of variables and to study the relationships into which those patterns enter. Patterns of variables are here called profiles. The PAMS procedure has been adapted to characteristics of the National Assessment of…

In the context of Phase Four of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Science Attribute Study, this report includes a discussion of item attributes, an overview of the item attributes used in the study, some psychometric characteristics of the blocks analyzed, a general description of the rule-space methodology, the results…

During the 1979-80 school year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) surveyed approximately 29,000 nine-year-old students regarding attitudes and achievement in reading and literature. Findings from this study were used for an analysis of the relationship between reading achievement and television viewing. The following…

Use of clustering methods with data from the 1987 High School Transcript (HST) component of the 1986 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is discussed in an attempt to persuade data analysts and researchers that they should be interested in problems traditionally turned over to samplers. Nearly all surveys used by the National Center…

Some results are presented relating to the dimensionality of the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics item-response data. Based on theoretical considerations, practical limitations, and previous research, two procedures were selected for study: full information factor analysis as implemented in the TESTFACT computer…

Efficient methods of using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to analyze National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data files are discussed. One error in the NAEP SPSS file is discussed, and another error (which may be system-dependent) is mentioned. In addition, purely mathematical methods are used to address the…

The research reported in this paper was conducted to gain information to guide the selection of standard setting procedures for use with polytomous items to set achievement levels on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in U.S. History and geography. Standard-setting procedures were evaluated to determine the relative…

This paper describes the task analysis of performance-based science tasks that were designed for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment, now postponed until 1996, and field tested in 1993. A brief description of the science performance tasks is followed by a description of the task analyses performed and a…

Changes that have been made in reporting and disseminating information from the National Assessment of Educational Progress are discussed, focusing on those changes brought about by the first Trial State Assessment (TSA). The TSA collected data on the mathematics performance of students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in public and private schools in 40…