Developing countries achieve surprisingly weak results in international cognitive competence studies. The results are about one to two standard deviations below the average norm-values obtained in Western countries. The results are so low that they are sometimes difficult to believe. For example, in the World Bank collection, Nigeria scored 262…

Examinations of the internal structure of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) have yielded inconsistent conclusions within and across cultural contexts. This study examined the dimensionality and reliability of the DASS-21 across three theoretically plausible factor structures (i.e., unidimensional, oblique three-factor, and…

AI-based simulations for educational and assessment purposes are gaining global recognition. Informed by cultural comparison research, this study investigates cross-country variations in users' utilization and perceptions of a simulation-based assessment. Specifically, we conducted a comparative analysis between a sample of South African and…

The use of college entrance exams for facilitating admission decisions become controversial, and the central argument is around the fairness of test scores. The Kuwait University English Aptitude Test (KUEAT) is a high-stakes test, but very few studies have examined the psychometric quality of the scores for this national-level assessment. This…

Using a unique database from Hungarian primary schools, this study investigates whether academic self-assessment and educational aspirations differ between Roma minority and non-Roma majority students with similar cognitive skills and abilities. I find that Roma students have lower self-assessment, on average, than their non-Roma classmates with…

How do adult "culture wars" in education affect student learning in the classroom? I explore this question by combining information on nearly 500 school district political controversies with data on state test scores. Leveraging variation in the location and timing of these events as the basis for a difference-in-differences design, I…

Effective communication is a fundamental aspect of children's daily living, enabling interaction with adults and peers. A rich literature suggests that communicative abilities develop with age, while little is known about cross-cultural differences and similarities. This study presents a comparison of the communicative performance of Finnish (n =…

In this study, we examined monitoring accuracy during in class-exams for Emirati, American and Cypriot college students. In experiment 1, 120 students made local, confidence-ratings for each multiple-choice question in a psychology exam and also estimated their performance at the end of the exam. In experiment 2, to investigate the effect of…

Assessment of progress toward UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 requires measurement of the proportion of children aged 24 to 59 months developmentally on track in health, learning, and psychosocial well-being (Indicator 4.2.1). UNICEF's methodological work culminated with the development of the Early Childhood Development Index 2030 (ECDI2030) to…

The academic buoyancy scale (ABS) is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring academic buoyancy. To obtain meaningful and valid comparisons across groups using ABS, however, measurement invariance should be ascertained a priori. To that end, we examined its measurement invariance, validity evidence based on relations to other…

This National Academy of Education (NAEd) volume provides guidance to key stakeholders on how to accurately report and interpret comparability assertions concerning large-scale educational assessments as well as how to ensure greater comparability by paying close attention to key aspects of assessment design, content, and procedures. The goal of…

Effective collaborative problem solving comprises cognitive dimensions, in which men tend to outperform women, and social dimensions in which women tend to outperform men. We extend research on between-country differences in gender gaps by considering collaborative problem solving and its association with two indicators of societal-level gender…

Measurement of the building blocks of everyday thought must capture the range of different ways that humans may train, develop, and use their cognitive resources in real world tasks. Executive Function as a construct has been enthusiastically adopted by cognitive and education sciences due to its theorized role as an underpinning of, and…

The aim of this study was to investigate the comparability of feedback across culturally diverse countries by assessing the measurement invariance in PISA 2015 data. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis showed that the feedback scale implemented in PISA 2015 was not invariant across countries. The intercepts and residuals of the factor model…

The study examined the use of the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) in assessing Chinese as a second language and the challenges faced by teachers in the Chinese Language Scholarship (CLS) program. The Concurrent Triangulation Mixed Method Research was used in the study in which qualitative and quantitative data are collected simultaneously,…