The "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" indicate that test instructions, and by extension item objectives, presented to examinees should be sufficiently clear and detailed to help ensure that they respond as developers intend them to respond (Standard 3.20; AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999). The present study investigates…

Many innovative item formats have been proposed over the past decade, but little empirical research has been conducted on their measurement properties. This study examines the reliability, efficiency, and construct validity of two innovative item formats--the figural response (FR) and constructed response (CR) formats used in a K-12 computerized…

The articles in this special issue make two important contributions to our understanding of the impact of accommodations on test score validity. First, they illustrate a variety of methods for collection and rigorous analyses of empirical data that can supplant expert judgment of the impact of accommodations. These methods range from internal…

Glossary and reading aloud test items are commonly allowed in many states' accommodation policies for English language learner (ELL) students for large-scale mathematics assessments. However, little research is available regarding the effects of these accommodations on ELL students' performance. Further, no research exists that examines how…

This study explores factors that affect the accessibility of reading comprehension assessments for students with disabilities in grade 8 public school classrooms. The study consisted of assessing students using reading comprehension passages that were broken down into shorter "segments" or "chunks" in order to assess the…

This study examined the validity of test accommodation in third-eighth graders using differential item functioning (DIF) and mixture IRT models. Two data sets were used for these analyses. With the first data set (N = 51,591) we examined whether item type (i.e., story, explanation, straightforward) or item features were associated with item…

Given the changing landscape of educational accountability at the local, state, and national levels, and the changes in the uses of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), including the evolving uses of NAEP as a policy tool to interpret state assessment and accountability systems, an explicit statement of the current and potential…

In the first part of this article, the use of Generalizability (G) theory in examining the dependability of concept map assessment scores and designing a concept map assessment for a particular practical application is discussed. In the second part, the application of G theory is demonstrated by comparing the technical qualities of two frequently…

Scoring rubrics are routinely used to evaluate the quality of writing samples produced for writing performance assessments, with anchor papers chosen to represent score points defined in the rubric. Although the careful selection of anchor papers is associated with best practices for scoring, little research has been conducted on the role of…