Many high-stakes examinations in the United Kingdom (UK) use both constructed-response items and selected-response items. We need to evaluate the inter-rater reliability for constructed-response items that are scored by humans. While there are a variety of methods for evaluating rater consistency across ratings in the psychometric literature, we…

The present paper aims to discuss how data from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) can be utilized and combined, even with other existing data sources, in order to monitor educational outcomes and study the effectiveness of educational systems. We consider different purposes of linking data, namely, extending outcomes measures,…

Understanding the effects of class size reduction (CSR) has been an enduring issue in education. For the past 3 decades, Project STAR has stimulated research and policy discussions regarding the effects of CSR on a variety of outcomes. Schanzenbach (2007) reviewed STAR studies and concluded that small classes improved student academic outcomes.…

A multilevel analysis approach was used to analyse students' evaluation of teaching (SET). The low value of inter-rater reliability stresses that any solid conclusions on teaching cannot be made on the basis of single feedbacks. To assess a teacher's general teaching effectiveness, one needs to evaluate four randomly chosen course implementations.…

This study examines the usefulness of the Montreal Service Concept framework of service quality measurement, when it was used as a predefined set of codes in content analysis of patients' responses. As well, the study quantifies the interrater agreement of coded data. Two raters independently reviewed each of the responses from a mail survey of…

Pattern generalising problems offer a very rich context for exploring relationships among quantities, expressing generality and representing the same relationship in different ways. Selecting appropriate tasks for students to work on in class is by no means a straightforward process, but there are ways to handle it. This article aims to explore…

High stakes postgraduate specialist certification examinations have considerable implications for the future careers of examinees. Medical colleges and professional boards have a social and professional responsibility to ensure their fitness for purpose. To date there is a paucity of published data about the reliability of specialist certification…

Generalizability of writing scores has always been a longstanding concern in L2 writing assessment. A number of studies have been conducted to investigate this topic during the last two decades. However, with the introduction of new test methods, such as reading-to-write tasks, generalizability studies need to focus on the score accuracy of…

Numerous studies have compared the Angoff standard-setting procedure to other standard-setting methods, but relatively few studies have evaluated the procedure based on internal criteria. This study uses a generalizability theory framework to evaluate the stability of the estimated cut score. To provide a measure of internal consistency, this…

The "Special Ability Selection Examination" (SASE), which is used to select appropriate students for the music education departments of educational faculties in Turkey, has many subsections and must evaluate highly competitive cohorts of students according to a broad range of criteria. The test consists of three subsections, with a large…

Demonstrates how perspectives from covariance structural modeling and generalizability theory can be combined for a comprehensive assessment of latent constructs. This approach to examining variance components is illustrated by one- and two- facet designs, and can be extended to more complex designs. (MAK)

A study on sampling errors of variance components was conducted within the framework of generalizability theory by P. L. Smith (1978). The study used an intuitive approach for solving the problem of how to allocate the number of conditions to different facets in order to produce the most stable estimate of the universe score variance. Optimization…

Khuri's and Satterthwaite's methods of obtaining confidence intervals of variance components are compared. The article discusses that Khuri's method may be applied to obtain confidence intervals for the variance components and other linear functions of the expected mean squares used in generalizability theory. (Author/JAZ)

This article investigates a group oral test as administered at a university in Japan to find if it is appropriate to use scores for higher stakes decision making. It is one component of an in-house English proficiency test used for placing students, evaluating their progress, and making informed decisions for the development of the English…

We contend that generalizability (G) theory allows the design of psychometric approaches to testing English-language learners (ELLs) that are consistent with current thinking in linguistics. We used G theory to estimate the amount of measurement error due to code (language or dialect). Fourth- and fifth-grade ELLs, native speakers of…