Providing assessment validity information to decision makers in a clear and useful format is an ongoing challenge for the educational and psychological measurement community. We identify issues with a previous approach to a graphical presentation, noting that it is mislabeled as presenting incremental validity, when in fact it displays the effects…

This introductory article describes how constructed response scoring is carried out, particularly the rater monitoring processes and illustrates three potential designs for conducting rater monitoring in an operational scoring project. The introduction also presents a framework for interpreting research conducted by those who study the constructed…

We evaluate the feasibility of developing predictive models of rater behavior, that is, "rater-specific" models for predicting the scores produced by a rater under operational conditions. In the present study, the dependent variable is the score assigned to essays by a rater, and the predictors are linguistic attributes of the essays…

Item difficulty modeling studies involve (a) hypothesizing item features, or item response demands, that are likely to predict item difficulty with some degree of accuracy; and (b) entering the features as independent variables into a regression equation or other statistical model to predict difficulty. In this review, we report findings from 13…

The objective of this study was to evaluate whether differential noneffortful responding (identified via response latencies) was present in four countries administered a low-stakes college-level critical thinking assessment. Results indicated significant differences (as large as 0.90 "SD") between nearly all country pairings in the…

To score an essay response, raters draw on previously trained skills and knowledge about the underlying rubric and score criterion. Cognitive processes such as remembering, forgetting, and skill decay likely influence rater performance. To investigate how forgetting influences scoring, we evaluated raters' scoring accuracy on TOEFL and GRE essays.…

The current simulation study examined the effects of Item Parameter Drift (IPD) occurring in a short scale on parameter estimates in multilevel models where scores from a scale were employed as a time-varying predictor to account for outcome scores. Five factors, including three decisions about IPD, were considered for simulation conditions. It…

The main purposes of this study were to develop bi-factor multidimensional item response theory (BF-MIRT) observed-score equating procedures for mixed-format tests and to investigate relative appropriateness of the proposed procedures. Using data from a large-scale testing program, three types of pseudo data sets were formulated: matched samples,…

Testlets, or groups of related items, are commonly included in educational assessments due to their many logistical and conceptual advantages. Despite their advantages, testlets introduce complications into the theory and practice of educational measurement. Responses to items within a testlet tend to be correlated even after controlling for…