One major issue with large-scale assessments is that the respondents might give no responses to many items, resulting in less accurate estimations of both assessed abilities and item parameters. This report studies how the types of items affect the item-level nonresponse rates and how different methods of treating item-level nonresponses have an…

This report reviews the major international and regional large-scale educational assessments, including international surveys, school-based surveys and household-based surveys. The report compares and contrasts the cognitive and contextual data collection instruments and implementation methods used by the different assessments in order to identify…

Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) offers a flexible, collaborative approach to developing and implementing an assessment of learning outcomes that yields high-quality, nationally relevant data. MTEG is a service that involves ACER staff working closely with each country to develop an assessment program that meets the country's…

Social scientists usually are more interested in consumers' dichotomous choice, such as purchase a product or not, adopt a technology or not, etc. However, up to date, there is nearly no model can help us solve the problem of multi-network effects comparison with a dichotomous dependent variable. Furthermore, the study of multi-network…

This article describes the process of development of assessment instruments for a three-year longitudinal comparative study that focused on evaluating American high school students' mathematics learning from two distinct approaches to content organization: curriculum built around a sequence of three full-year courses (Algebra 1, Geometry, and…

Background: All national curriculum tests in England are pre-tested as part of the development process. Differences in pupil performance between pre-test and live test are consistently found. This difference has been termed the pre-test effect. Understanding the pre-test effect is essential in the test development and selection processes and in…

The purpose of this paper was to describe the process of development of assessment instruments for the Comparing Options in Secondary Mathematics: Investigating Curriculum (COSMIC) project. The COSMIC project was a three-year longitudinal comparative study focusing on evaluating high school students' mathematics learning from two distinct…

To determine whether the so-called "two-cultures gap" exists between the humanities and the sciences in high school, and if so, its extent and nature, a series of relatively unstructured interviews were held with science and humanities teachers in six Connecticut high schools to determine what attitudinal differences existed between the two…

This paper describes the rationale for the Defining Issues Test (DIT), an objective test of moral judgment which attempts to improve upon three aspects of Kohlberg's research: data collection, categorization of moral judgments (the scoring system), and method of indexing a subject's progress in a developmental sequence. In each case, the way in…

A survey of compensatory and noncompensatory reading programs in grades 2, 4, and 6 of the U. S. public schools was carried out in spring 1972. Phase I, the subject of this report, involved two tasks: (1) describing what was meant by "compensatory reading", and (2) identifying the characteristics of schools in which compensatory reading…

The primary purpose of this project was to develop a system for the evaluation of student teachers employing automated data processing as an integral part of the system. This system employed data gathered from four sources: (1) Public School Pupils, Grades 7-12; (2) Student Teachers; (3) Supervising Teachers; (4) College Supervisors. The emphasis…

This paper examines the development and evaluation of criterion-referenced measures, and elaborates on the distinction between them and norm-referenced measures. The concept of sensitivity is introduced as an appropriate method for evaluating such measures, and a sensitivity index is proposed. The traditional model for the response of a subject to…

This paper addresses two audiences--those who design education trend studies that simultaneously have longitudinal and intercohort implications, and the secondary analysts who use such trend data. Four study series conducted for the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provide material for the paper: the…

Comprehensive Achievement Monitoring (CAM) is a systematic procedure of constructing and administering longitudinal, criterion-referenced tests. CAM has advantages over typical classroom testing of having well-organized tests, providing course evaluation through pretesting, posttesting, and retention measurement; producing data for continuous…

Examines a Danish English-language reading proficiency test offered to freshman students to diagnose weaknesses which may impede their academic careers. To facilitate the assessment of what parts can be transferred and used in other language areas, the article discusses the test construction, development and improvement. (11 references) (Author/CK)