Inspired by the recent 21st century social and educational movements toward equity, diversity, and inclusion for disadvantaged groups, educational researchers have sought in conceptualizing fairness in classroom assessment contexts. These efforts have provoked promising key theoretical foundations and empirical investigations to examine fairness…

This study addresses equating issues with varying sample sizes using the Rasch model by examining how sample size affects the stability of item calibrations and person ability estimates. A resampling design was used to create 9 sample size conditions (200, 100, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, and 20), each replicated 10 times. Items were recalibrated…

Maintaining equivalent performance standards across forms is a psychometric challenge exacerbated by small samples. In this study, the accuracy of two equating methods (Rasch anchored calibration and nominal weights mean) and four anchor item selection methods were investigated in the context of very small samples (N = 10). Overall, nominal…

The growing number of children in primary schools in Germany who have German as their second language (L2) has raised questions about the fairness of performance assessment. Fair tests are a prerequisite for distinguishing between L2 learning delay and a specific learning disability. We evaluated five commonly used reading and spelling tests for…

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…

As the popularity of rich assessment scenarios increases so must the availability of psychometric models capable of handling the resulting data. Dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs) offer a fast, flexible option for characterizing student ability across time under psychometrically complex conditions. In this article, a brief introduction to DBNs is…

Traditional psychometric guidelines suggest that at least several hundred respondents are needed to obtain accurate parameter estimates under the Rasch model. However, recent research indicates that Rasch equating results in accurate parameter estimates with sample sizes as small as 25. Item parameter drift under the Rasch model has been…

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 --…

Item development is a time- and resource-intensive process. Automatic item generation integrates cognitive modeling with computer technology to systematically generate test items. To date, however, items generated using cognitive modeling procedures have received limited use in operational testing situations. As a result, the psychometric…