Does student-teacher match quality exist? Prior work has documented large disparities in teachers' impacts across student types but has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I propose a disparate value-added model and derive a novel measure of teacher quality--revealed comparative advantage--that…

This technical document provides guidance to educators on the creation and interpretation of survey instruments, particularly as they relate to an analysis of program implementation. Illustrative examples are drawn from a survey of educators related to the use of the easyCBM learning system. This document includes specific sections on…

Fit statistics provide a direct measure of assessment accuracy by analyzing the fit of measurement models to an individual's (or group's) response pattern. Students that lose interest during the assessment, for example, will miss exercises that are within their abilities. Such students will respond correctly to some more difficult items and…

The first step of the data analysis with respect to the eventual application of the various new methods in latent trait theory is here initiated. The data are a set of approximately 500 item responses of each of 7,439 examinees to the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form 6, on one of three difficulty levels, which correspond to the ages of 11, 12 and…

This study was conducted to evaluate whether a brief self-description checklist may provide a viable method of quickly obtaining initial personality type information. The Personal Preferences Self-Description Questionnaire (PPSDQ) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) were administered to 420 college students, and PPSDQ item-response and MBTI…

This study investigated the dimensionality of mathematics subscale scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress for the assessment's Technical Review Panel, specifically for the data from the 1990 and 1992 main assessment in relation to students' instructional and noninstructional background variables. Discriminant analysis was…

The use of a three-parameter logistic model for applying latent trait theory has become more popular because of the availability of computer programs. The program Logist 5 can be used not only for the item parameter estimation in the three-parameter logistic model, but also in the two parameter logistic model by setting the third parameter equal…

This study used the restricted access database of the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty to examine faculty workload by academic discipline for full-time regularly appointed teaching and research faculty in public Carnegie research I and II and Doctoral I and II institutions (n=2,056). Data are reported for 14 disciplinary areas…

This technical report describes the development, pilot testing, and revision of a survey instrument designed to measure secondary school teachers' perceptions of their efficacy working with students from diverse backgrounds. A brief review of relevant literature frames the current study in the context of survey development that is technically…

The purpose of this study was to use realistically simulated data to evaluate various CAT designs for use with the verbal reasoning measure of the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). Factors such as item pool depth, content constraints, and item formats often cause repeated adaptive administrations of an item at ability levels that are not…

This volume contains tables of item analysis results obtained by following procedures associated with the Rasch Model for those reading tests used in the Anchor Test Study. Appendix I gives the test names and their corresponding analysis code numbers. Section I (Basic Item Analyses) presents data for the item analysis of each test in a two part…

The stability of Rasch test item difficulty parameters was investigated under varying conditions. Data were taken from a mathematics achievement test administered to over 2,000 Australian students. The experiments included: (1) relative stability of the Rasch, traditional, and z-item difficulty parameters using different sample sizes and designs;…