This study aimed to adapt the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competence scale (PPC) to the Russian-speaking population and to assess its psychometric properties. Five hundred and sixty-four undergraduate students from Western, Central, and Caucasian regions of Russia and Kazakhstan participated in the study. Internal consistency, factorial,…

Purpose: The validity of any performance assessment depends substantially on the rating scale used in the assessment procedure. It delineates the theoretical construct being measured and influences how performances are judged and interpreted. This study examined the factorial validity and invariance of the rating scale used for the assessment of…

This study investigated the construct validity of a local speaking test for international teaching assistants (ITAs) from a fairness perspective, by employing a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the impact of task type and examinee first language (L1) background on the internal structure of the test. The test consists of…

This study assessed the factor structure of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC®) Listening and Reading test, and its invariance across subgroups of test-takers. The subgroups were defined by (a) gender, (b) age, (c) employment status, (d) time spent studying English, and (e) having lived in a country where English is the…

Multiple traits of language proficiency as well as test method effects were concurrently analyzed to investigate interrelations of construct validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity using multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrices. A total of 585 test takers' scores were derived from the field test of the "Pearson Test of English…

Intercultural understanding (ICU) is becoming an essential part of living and contributing effectively in our increasingly diverse society. In fact, ICU is a key capability in the Australian schooling curriculum, alongside other general capabilities such as numeracy and literacy. While there are current instruments assessing ICU, there is little…

Background: This study examined the factor structure of the Test of English for Academic Purposes (TEAP®) test--a recently developed academic English test measuring four skills among Japanese university applicants--and compared the structure to that of the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-based test (TOEFL iBT®), to investigate the…

This study examined the construct validity of the TOEFL iBT Speaking subsection for the purposes of international teaching assistant (ITA) certification, a purpose for which it was not specifically designed. The factor structure of the new TOEFL was compared with that of another language performance test in use at a major American research…

The first aim of this study was to develop a computer adaptive EFL test (CALT) that assesses test takers' listening and reading proficiency in English with dichotomous items and polytomous testlets. We reported in detail on the development of the CALT, including item banking, determination of suitable item response theory (IRT) models for item…

To investigate the construct validly of a section of a high stakes test, an exploratory factor analysis using principal components analysis was employed. The rotation used was varimax with the suppression level of 0.30. Eleven factors were extracted out of 35 reading comprehension items. The fact that these factors emerged speak to the construct…

To date, assessment validity research on non-native English speaking students in the United States has focused exclusively on those who are presently English language learners (ELLs). However, little, if any, research has been conducted on two other sizable groups of language minority students: (a) bilingual or multilingual students who were…

The study was conducted with 3,385 participants who took an English language proficiency test as a partial requirement for entering a PhD program in different fields of education. This test has three sections which are grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension. To determine the construct validity of the test, a series of analyses were done.…

What C-tests actually measure has been an issue of debate for many years. In the present research, the authors examined the hypothesis that C-tests measure general language proficiency. A total of 843 participants from four independent samples took a German C-test along with the TestDaF (Test of German as a Foreign Language). Rasch measurement…

Administration of the Test of Spoken English (TSE) yields tapes of oral performance on items within six sections of the test. Trained scorers subsequently rate responses using four proficiency scales: pronunciation, grammar, fluency, and overall comprehensibility. This project examined the consistency of statistical relations among TSE scores with…