Developmental research often involves studying change across 2 or more processes or constructs simultaneously. A natural question in this work is whether change in these 2 processes is related or independent. Associative latent transition analysis (ALTA) was designed to test hypotheses about the degree to which change in 2 discrete latent…

Scalability coefficients play an important role in Mokken scale analysis. For a set of items, scalability coefficients have been defined for each pair of items, for each individual item, and for the entire scale. Hypothesis testing with respect to these scalability coefficients has not been fully developed. This study introduces marginal modelling…

When people make causal judgments from contingency information, a principal aim is to account for occurrences of the outcome. When 2 causes are under consideration, the capacity of either to account for occurrences is judged from how likely the cause is to be present when the outcome occurs and from the rate at which the outcome occurs when that…

This study examines the overall results of the Physical Fitness Test (PFT) and the six fitness areas of the PFT, academic achievement, demographics and self perceptions and the potential impact on students' performance on the PFT. While academic expectations are increasing, the adolescent obesity rate is also increasing, producing a decline in the…

The reporting of scores on educational tests is at times misunderstood, misinterpreted, and potentially confusing to examinees and other stakeholders who may need to interpret test scores. In reporting test results to examinees, there is a need for clarity in the message communicated. As pressure rises for students to demonstrate performance at a…

Public school districts in the Mississippi (MS) Delta are under severe pressure to make rapid and adaptable changes in response to the federal legislation No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the MS Plan for Student Achievement: Assessment, Accreditation, and Accountability. These reform Acts require higher student performance standards and new…

Online peer assessment is an innovative evaluation method that has caught both educators' and practitioners' attention in recent years. The purpose of this study was to develop relevant questionnaires for teachers to understand student self-efficacy and motivation in online peer assessment learning environments. A total of 205 college students…

In this article we focus on two specific cases illustrating how similar issues have been addressed differently. Flanders, a federal state of Belgium, and the Netherlands share Dutch as an official language, yet remarkable differences in assessment traditions and policy development exist between them. These differences are most obvious with regard…

This article details the implementation and use of a "Review Stage" within the CAP (computerised assessment by peers) tool as part of the assessment process for a post-graduate module in e-learning. It reports upon the effect of providing the students with a "second chance" in marking and commenting their peers' essays having been able to view the…

A readily implemented procedure is discussed for interval estimation of indexes of interrelationship between items from multiple-component measuring instruments as well as between items and total composite scores. The method is applicable with categorical (ordinal) observed variables, and can be widely used in the process of scale construction,…

As Rupp and Templin (2008) stated directly, diagnostic classification methods "are confirmatory in nature." Methods, though, are neither inherently confirmatory nor exploratory. Diagnostic classification modeling, with its analytical and computational obstacles eventually yielding as a comprehensive and potent discipline emerges, will…

Schools struggle to accurately assess nonnative speakers of English using accountability systems that somehow do not capture the complexity of the issues at hand. This article discusses topics surrounding the assessment of English language learners and how these issues have been oversimplified by such processes as the No Child Left Behind…

In this article we present results from a study investigating the impact of three state exit exam systems on teaching and learning in college-preparatory schools. The study compares one state with a traditionally more centralized exam regime, one state that is more de-centralized and one state that has recently switched to more centralized…

Provides background information on the move toward competency testing in composition and the subsequent implications for college writing instructors. Examines problems inherent to developing a comptency based program at the college level and what composition teachers need to be aware of regarding such testing. (HTH)

Three papers are included in this document. The first, "An Introduction to the Problem of Test User Qualifications," by Kevin L. Moreland, is a short history of the American Psychological Association (APA)/American Educational Research Association (AERA)/National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) Working Group on Test User…