Educational testing has been criticized for its disconnect from modern cognitive science and its limited role in improving instruction and student learning. Reform efforts emphasize the need for testing to provide specific diagnostic insights into students' skills and knowledge. Cognitive diagnosis (CD), an emerging paradigm in educational…

To mitigate the deleterious effects of rapid guessing (RG) on ability estimates, several rescoring procedures have been proposed. Underlying many of these procedures is the assumption that RG is accurately identified. At present, there have been minimal investigations examining the utility of rescoring approaches when RG is misclassified, and…

Testing programs are confronted with the decision of whether to report individual scores for examinees that have engaged in rapid guessing (RG). As noted by the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing," this decision should be based on a documented criterion that determines score exclusion. To this end, a number of heuristic…

Estimation of parameters for the many-facets Rasch model requires that conditional on the values of the facets, such as person ability, item difficulty, and rater severity, the observed responses within each facet are independent. This requirement has often been discussed for the Rasch models and 2PL and 3PL models, but it becomes more complex…

The current study expands on previous research on gender differences and similarities in science test scores. Using three different approaches -- differential item functioning, differential distractor functioning, and decision tree analysis -- we examine a high school science assessment administered to 3,849 10th-12th graders, of whom 2,021 are…

Twenty-five years after the introduction of Carroll's (1993) Three Stratum (3S) theory of intelligence and McGrew's (1997) subsequent synthesis of 3S with the extended Gf-Gc / Horn-Cattell theory, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory represents the prevailing framework by which the structure of human cognitive and intellectual abilities is…

In recent years, the interest in measuring growth in student ability in various subjects between different grades in school has increased. Therefore, good precision in the estimated growth is of importance. This paper aims to compare estimation methods and test designs when it comes to precision and bias of the estimated growth of mean ability…

This brief article introduces the topic of intelligence as highly appropriate for educational measurement professionals. It describes some of the uses of intelligence tests both historically and currently. It argues why knowledge of intelligence theory and intelligence testing is important for educational measurement professionals. The articles…

The Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model presently serves as a blueprint for both test development and a taxonomy for clinical interpretation of modern tests of cognitive ability. Accordingly, the trend among test publishers has been toward creating tests that provide users with an ever-increasing array of scores that comport with CHC. However, an…

In applications of item response theory (IRT), fixed parameter calibration (FPC) has been used to estimate the item parameters of a new test form on the existing ability scale of an item pool. The present paper presents an application of FPC to multiple examinee groups test data that are linked to the item pool via anchor items, and investigates…

Response times have often been used as ancillary information to improve parameter estimation. Under the dual processing theory, assuming reading comprehension requires an automatic process, a fast, correct response is an indicator of effective automatic processing. A skilled, automatic comprehender should be high in response accuracy and low in…

The Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) taxonomy of cognitive abilities married John Horn and Raymond Cattell's Extended Gf-Gc theory with John Carroll's Three-Stratum Theory. While there are some similarities in arrangements or classifications of tasks (observed variables) within similar broad or narrow dimensions, other salient theoretical features and…

Charles Spearman and L. L. Thurstone were pioneers in the field of intelligence. They not only developed methods to assess and understand intelligence, but also developed theories about its structure and function. Methodologically, their approaches were not that distinct, but their theories of intelligence were philosophically very different --…

This study examined the effect of similar vs. dissimilar proficiency distributions on uniform DIF detection on a statewide eighth grade mathematics assessment. Results from the similar- and dissimilar-ability reference groups with an SWD focal group were compared for four models: logistic regression, hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM),…

Erasure analysis is the study of the pattern or quantity of erasures on multiple-choice paper-and-pencil examinations, to determine whether erasures were made post-testing for the purpose of unfairly increasing students' scores. This study examined the erasure data from over 1.4 million exams, taken by more than 600,000 students. Three…