This article builds upon a proiminent definition of construct validity that focuses on variation in attributes causing variation in measurement outcomes. This article synthesizes the defintion and uses Rasch measurement modeling to explicate a modified conceptualization of construct validity for assessments of developmental attributes. If…

Surveys with rating scales are often used in higher education research to measure student learning and development, yet testing and reporting on the longitudinal psychometric properties of these instruments is rare. Rasch techniques allow scholars to map item difficulty and individual aptitude on the same linear, continuous scale to compare…

Chemistry faculty members are highly skilled in obtaining, analyzing, and interpreting physical measurements, but often they are less skilled in measuring student learning. This work provides guidance for chemistry faculty from the research literature on multiple-choice item development in chemistry. Areas covered include content, stem, and…

Item-level information, such as difficulty and discrimination are invaluable to the test assembly, equating, and scoring practices. Estimating these parameters within the context of large-scale performance assessments is often hindered by the use of unbalanced designs for assigning examinees to tasks and raters because such designs result in very…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…

The linear logistic test model (LLTM) breaks down the item parameter of the Rasch model as a linear combination of some hypothesized elementary parameters. Although the original purpose of applying the LLTM was primarily to generate test items with specified item difficulty, there are still many other potential applications, which may be of use…

It is shown that in the context of the Model with Internal Restrictions on the Item Difficulties (MIRID), different componential theories about an item set may lead to equivalent models. Furthermore, we provide conditions for the identifiability of the MIRID model parameters, and it will be shown how the MIRID model relates to the Linear Logistic…

Relational complexity (RC) theory conceptualizes an individual's processing capacity and a task's complexity along a common ordinal metric. The authors describe the development of the Latin Square Task (LST) that assesses the influence of RC on reasoning. The LST minimizes the role of knowledge and storage capacity and thus refines the…

Two psychometric models are presented for evaluating the difficulty of the distractors in multiple-choice items. They are based on the criterion of rising distractor selection ratios, which facilitates interpretation of the subject and item parameters. Statistical inferential tools are developed in a Bayesian framework: modal a posteriori…

This article presents a psychometric model for estimating ability and item-selection strategies in self-adapted testing. In contrast to computer adaptive testing, in self-adapted testing the examinees are allowed to select the difficulty of the items. The item-selection strategy is defined as the distribution of difficulty conditional on the…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development and piloting of reading comprehension measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fifth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks underlying the…

There have been many attempts to formulate a procedure for extracting information from incorrect responses to multiple choice items, i.e., the assessment of partial knowledge. The results of these attempts can be described as inconsistent at best. It is hypothesized that these inconsistencies arise from three methodological problems: the…

Recent assessment research joining cognitive psychology and psychometric theory has introduced a new technology, item generation. In algorithmic item generation, items are systematically created based on specific combinations of features that underlie the processing required to correctly solve a problem. Reading comprehension items have been more…

SIETTE is a web-based adaptive testing system. It implements Computerized Adaptive Tests. These tests are tailor-made, theory-based tests, where questions shown to students, finalization of the test, and student knowledge estimation is accomplished adaptively. To construct these tests, SIETTE has an authoring environment comprising a suite of…