The OECD's Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) 2023 represents the largest global initiative to gather comparable data on the development of social and emotional skills among 10- and 15-year-old students. In the 2023 cycle of SSES, 16 sites implemented an assessment of students' social and emotional skills and collected contextual…

In this study, we define the term "screener test," elaborate key considerations in test design, and describe how to incorporate the concepts of practicality and argument-based validation to drive an evaluation of screener tests for language assessment. A screener test is defined as a brief assessment designed to identify an examinee as a…

Test takers should have a voice in testing practices (Mathew, 2004). However, when incorporating their input, systematic processes to ensure the validity of testing practices must be followed. Such processes allow for test development to be a more democratic process (Shohamy, 2001), without sacrificing the value of the resulting inferences made…

This paper introduces criterion-referenced tests (CRTs), compares them with norm-referenced tests (NRTs), discusses how they can be evaluated and revised, and presents a study of an actual class and textbook test evaluation using CRTs. NRTs have dominated testing methodology since the mid-1970s; an example is the Test of English as a Foreign…

This paper traces developments in educational psychology and measurement that led to the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) and the application of educational measurement terms such as validity and reliability to testing. Use of a table of specifications for planning…