International surveys are increasingly being used to understand nonacademic outcomes like math and science motivation, and to inform education policy changes within countries. Such instruments assume that the measure works consistently across countries, ethnicities, and languages--that is, they assume measurement invariance. While studies have…

This report describes statistical analyses performed on data collected in the Spring of 2015 from the pilot study of proposed revised and new items in the IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction (SRI) system. Described are the methods employed, results obtained, and decisions made in selecting items for the updated instruments. The procedures occurred…

This study compares two approaches to grammatical knowledge in language assessment: the structural view that regards grammatical knowledge as vocabulary and syntax (Bachman 1990), and the communicative view that perceives it as the binary combination of grammatical form and meaning (Purpura 2004). 1,491 second-year nursing students from eight…

Measures of broad fluid abilities including verbal, quantitative, and figural reasoning are commonly used in the K-12 school context for a variety of purposes. However, differentiation of these domains is difficult for young children (grades K-2) who lack basic linguistic and mathematical literacy. This study examined the latent factor structure…

Federal legislation such as "No Child Left Behind" mandated that students with disabilities be included in accountability standards, creating an important responsibility to fairly assess all students, even those with disabilities. Consequently, a sense of urgency was placed on the entire educational system to ensure that these students…

A new Spanish version of the Cognitive Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS) was created to be used explicitly with Argentinean university students. The scale was translated and verified through blind back translation and given to a large sample of students majoring in psychology or chemistry (N = 752). Exploratory Factor Analysis (N = 376) showed an internal…

Nonlinear factor analysis is a tool commonly used by measurement specialists to identify both the presence and nature of multidimensionality in a set of test items, an important issue given that standard Item Response Theory models assume a unidimensional latent structure. Results from most factor-analytic algorithms include loading matrices,…

Academic psychology has long been composed of two disciplines, one experimental and one correlational. These two disciplines each developed their own method of studying structure in data: multidimensional scaling (MDS) and factor analysis. Both methods use similar kinds of input data, proximity measures on object pairs. Both represent the object…

The Rasch item fit approach for detecting multidimensionality in response data is compared with principal component analysis without rotation using simulated data. Results indicate that both approaches work in a variety of multidimensional data structures, but the Rasch item fit is better under some circumstances, as discussed. (SLD)

Demonstrates the extent to which item-score data can vary across cultures despite measurements from an instrument in which factorial structure is specified in each group. Scores from the Beck Depression Inventory for 658 Canadian, 1,096 Swedish, and 691 Bulgarian high school students illustrate the differences. Discusses implications for…

This study examined whether the original factor structure of the Parent Success Indicator (PSI) could be replicated with scores from generational views on both the English- and Mandarin-language versions of the instrument. The 60-item PSI was evaluated using responses from 840 Taiwanese parents (n = 429) and their 10- to 14-year-old adolescents (n…

The Affect Balance Scale (ABS) was administered to 380 undergraduate students. Factor analysis resulted in five negatively phrased items loading with the same signs as five positively phrased items. These results, contrary to previous results with older subjects, suggest that the ABS may not be appropriate for use across age groups. (Author/SLD)

The Second International Mathematics Study was conducted in 20 countries under the sponsorship of the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Among the instruments used in this study was a questionnaire investigating student attitudes about school, instruction, and mathematics. The fit of an a priori model that…

This study compares mean ratings, inter-rater reliabilities, and the factor structure of items for online and paper student-rating forms from the University of Washington's Instructional Assessment System. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)

The cognitive structure of an algebra test was defined and validated using the linear test model (LLTM) and quadratic assignment (QA) techniques. The LLTM is an extension of the Rasch model with a linear constraint that describes item difficulty in terms of the cognitive operations required to solve the item. The model permits the specification of…