Studies have confirmed that fair assessment practices in educational contexts affect learners' motivation, self-regulation, and above all teacher credibility, yet the concept has been subject to educational stakeholders' diverse outlooks and perspectives. On this basis, this study delves into the high school English as Foreign Language (EFL)…

The use of college entrance exams for facilitating admission decisions become controversial, and the central argument is around the fairness of test scores. The Kuwait University English Aptitude Test (KUEAT) is a high-stakes test, but very few studies have examined the psychometric quality of the scores for this national-level assessment. This…

This paper reports on an investigation of differential item functioning (DIF) in the Iranian Undergraduate University Entrance Special English Exam (IUUESEE) across four native language groups including the Azeri, the Persian, the Kurdish, and the Luri test takers via Rasch analysis. A total sample of 14,172 participants was selected for the…

Given the significance of the test fairness, this study aimed to investigate a reading comprehension test for evidence of differential item functioning (DIF) based on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' gender and their mode of learning (conventional vs. distance learning). To this end, 514 EFL learners were asked to take a 30-item…

The present study tries to investigate the fairness of an English reading comprehension test employing Kunnan's (2004) test fairness framework (TFF) as the most comprehensive model available for test fairness. The participants of this study comprised 300 freshman students taking general English course chosen based on the availability sampling,…

As perfectly summarised by Ida Lawrence, "Testing is growing by leaps and bounds across the world. There is a realization that a nation's well-being depends crucially on the educational achievement of its population. Valid tests are an essential tool to evaluate a nation's educational standing and to implement efficacious educational reforms.…

Although language test-takers have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical work in recent years, this work has been mainly concerned with their attitudes to test preparation and test-taking strategies, giving insufficient attention to their views on broader socio-political and ethical issues. This article examines test-takers' perceptions…

"Project 211" is one of the most important educational policies in China, which aims at selecting a small number of "key universities" for sustainable development in the 21st century. These selected "key universities" have received substantial funding from the government so they can recruit outstanding faculty and be…

Differential item functioning (DIF) is when a test item favors or hinders a characteristic exhibited by group members of a test-taking population. DIF analyses are statistical procedures used to determine to what extent the content of an item affects the item endorsement of sub-groups of test-takers. If DIF is found for many items on the test, the…