Motivation for reading is important to comprehension and has been studied extensively in offline reading contexts. However, we know little about the role of motivation in online reading, a new and increasingly important context for reading. This is largely because we lack valid and reliable instruments to estimate a student's motivation for online…

Media articles often communicate the latest scientific findings, and readers must evaluate the evidence and consider its potential implications. Prior work has found that the inclusion of graphs makes messages about scientific data more persuasive (Tal & Wansink, 2016). One explanation for this finding is that such visualizations evoke the…

Purpose: Psychometrically sound parenting instruments are a critical aid in guiding clinical assessments of adolescent behavioral outcomes, particularly among clinical samples of adolescents. However, there is a paucity of research on these parenting instruments among adolescents with histories of substance use disorders (SUDs) who represent a…

Virtual learning environments (VLE) are increasingly used at-scale in educational contexts to facilitate teaching and promote learning, and the data they produce can be used for educational research purposes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has repeatedly emphasized the importance of using evidence to…

Paraprofessionals have become a significant portion of the educational workforce for students with or at risk for needing, or receiving special educational services. Although best practice and federal legislation require supervision of paraprofessionals by certified professional educators, research indicates that supervision rendered to…

The field of educational measurement places validity and fairness as central concepts of assessment quality (AERA, APA, NCME, 2014). Prior research has proposed embedding fairness arguments within argument-based validity processes, particularly when fairness is conceived as comparability in assessment properties across groups (Chapelle, 2021; Xi,…

The importance of improving teachers' use of culturally responsive practice (CRP) in the classroom setting has been widely recognized. Although quantitative data on teachers' use of CRP has potential to be a helpful decision-making tool in advancing that goal, little is known about the psychometrics of classroom-based CRP measures, their utility…

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the parent-report Short Form Positive Family Support Strengths and Needs Assessment (PFS-SaNA). The PFS-SaNA is designed to reduce the time and burden of collaborative mental health screening. Parents of 245 students in the Northwest completed the screener at third, fourth,…

Computerized assessments and digital games have become more prevalent in childhood, necessitating a systematic investigation of the effects of gamified executive function assessments on performance and engagement. This study examined the feasibility of incorporating gamification and a machine learning algorithm that adapts task difficulty to…

Culturally responsive assessment practices include validated measures appropriate for use with diverse populations. Considering the increasing population of Latinx students in U.S. schools, measures need co-validated English and Spanish (SEHS) language forms. This study examined the Social Emotional Health Survey--Secondary with Latinx students…

Although researchers have investigated technical adequacy and usability of written-expression curriculum-based measures (WE-CBM), the economic implications of different scoring approaches have largely been ignored. The absence of such knowledge can undermine the effective allocation of resources and lead to the adoption of suboptimal measures for…

Summative assessments provide data to evaluate the effectiveness of schools, teachers, and educational policies, contributing to a robust accountability system worldwide. However, educators and scholars argue that summative assessments do not effectively promote ongoing learning, enhance teaching practices, or align with the skills required in the…

Direct Behavior Rating (DBR) is an efficient method for monitoring changes in student behavior in response to intervention. Emerging research on DBR Multi-Item Scales (DBR-MIS) indicates DBR-MIS has promising characteristics as a progress-monitoring assessment. Specifically, the multiple items within DBR-MIS allow stakeholders to measure specific…

Existing approaches to measuring writing performance are insufficient in terms of both technical adequacy as well as feasibility for use as a screening measure. This study examined the validity and diagnostic accuracy of several approaches to automated text evaluation as well as written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) to determine…

Response Process Validity (RPV) reflects the degree to which items are interpreted as intended by item developers. In this study, teacher responses to constructed response (CR) items to assess pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of middle school mathematics teachers were evaluated to determine what types of teacher responses signaled weak RPV. We…