The classification of test-takers into ethnic and racial groups ensures individuals and groups, identified in Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, are protected from adverse treatment (Camilli, 2006). The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) suggests that…

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a state-led consortium working to develop next-generation assessments that more accurately, compared to previous assessments, measure student progress toward college and career readiness. The PARCC assessments include both English Language Arts/Literacy (ELA/L) and…

From 2011-2013 the VCAA conducted a trial aligning the use of computers in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment culminating in a group of 62 volunteer students sitting their end of Year 12 technology-active Mathematical Methods (CAS) Examination 2 as a computer-based examination. This paper reports on statistical modelling undertaken to compare the…

Understanding adolescent self-concept is of great concern for educators, mental health professionals, and parents, as research consistently demonstrates that low self-concept is related to a number of problem behaviors and poor outcomes. Thus, accurate measurements of self-concept are key, and the validity of such measurements, including the…

Using data from the international Teacher Education and Development Study: Learning to Teach Mathematics (TEDS-M), the measurement equivalence of teachers' beliefs across countries is investigated for the case of "mathematics-as-a fixed-ability". Measurement equivalence is a crucial topic in all international large-scale assessments and…

We surveyed 506 Australian high school students on career development (exploration, planning, job-knowledge, decision-making, indecision), personal functioning (well-being, self-esteem, life satisfaction, school satisfaction) and control variables (parent education, school achievement), and tested differences among work-bound, college-bound and…

This article presents a study of ethnic Differential Item Functioning (DIF) for 4th-, 7th-, and 10th-grade reading items on a state criterion-referenced achievement test. The tests, administered 1997 to 2001, were composed of multiple-choice and constructed-response items. Item performance by focal groups (i.e., students from Asian/Pacific Island,…

Differential item functioning (DIF) continues to receive attention both in applied and methodological studies. Because DIF can be an indicator of irrelevant variance that can influence test scores, continuing to evaluate and improve the accuracy of detection methods is an essential step in gathering score validity evidence. Methods for detecting…

The purpose of the study is to examine the differential validity and prediction of the SAT using a nationally representative sample of first-year college students admitted with the revised version of the SAT. The findings demonstrate that there are similar patterns of differential validity and prediction by gender, race/ethnicity, and best…

This study examined operational data from the SAT Reasoning Test™ to determine if students who tested under extended-time conditions were suffering from excessive fatigue relative to students who tested under standard-time conditions. Excessive fatigue was defined by significant (a) increases in differential item functioning (DIF) and (b)…

Performance of high-scoring males and females on the mathematics section of three forms of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT-M) was examined to determine how item content, solution strategy, and speededness differentially affect performance. The mathematical and verbal sections of the SAT were also compared for similarities in the…

Steele and Aronson (1995) found that the performance of African-American subjects on test items portrayed as a problem-solving task, in a laboratory experiment, was adversely affected when they were asked about their ethnicity. This outcome was attributed to "stereotype threat". Performance was disrupted by the subjects' concerns about…