Background: Mode effects, the variations in item and scale properties attributed to the mode of test administration (paper vs. computer), have stimulated research around test equivalence and trend estimation in PISA. The PISA assessment framework provides the backbone to the interpretation of the results of the PISA test scores. However, an…

Students in Confucian culture are typically high-achieving on international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS. To explore factors that may explain the high performance of Confucian students, the present study compared the latent subpopulations of school resources and disciplinary climate in two Confucian countries and two Anglo countries. Using…

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was conducted in paper and online reading modes in 2016 using the same samples of students in a number of countries. Differences in reading literacy scores were found in several European countries. In some countries, the differences favored the electronic reading mode. Yet in others, the…

Background: The global outbreak of the novel COVID-19 virus presented a significant threat to students' well-being across the globe. In this paper, we construct a measure of student psychological distress related to COVID-19 disruption. We then examine the variation in students' psychological distress as a function of student demographic…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has become the world's largest comparative assessment of academic achievement. While hundreds of studies have examined the factors predicting student achievement in PISA, a comprehensive overview of the main predictors has yet to be completed. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic…

In educational and psychological research, it is common to use latent factors to represent constructs and then to examine covariate effects on these latent factors. Using empirical data, this study applied three approaches to covariate effects on latent factors: the multiple-indicator multiple-cause (MIMIC) approach, multiple group confirmatory…

Background: Examinees may not make enough effort when responding to test items if the assessment has no consequence for them. These disengaged responses can be problematic in low-stakes, large-scale assessments because they can bias item parameter estimates. However, the amount of bias, and whether this bias is similar across administrations, is…

International large-scale assessments like international computer and information literacy study (ICILS) (Fraillon et al. in International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), 2015) provide important empirically-based knowledge through the proficiency scales, of what characterizes tasks at different difficulty levels,…

Given the ongoing development of computer-based tasks, there has been increasing interest in modelling students' behaviour indicators from log file data with contextual variables collected via questionnaires. In this work, we apply a latent regression model to analyse the relationship between latent constructs (i.e., performance, speed, and…

Background: Evidence so far shows that Waldorf students are characterized by average science achievement but at the same time high socioeconomic status and high science motivation. Moreover, Waldorf education is characterized by high emphasis on inquiry-based science education (IBSE). The present study investigates if the specific…

Background: The current study compared four differential item functioning (DIF) methods to examine their performances in terms of accounting for dual dependency (i.e., person and item clustering effects) simultaneously by a simulation study, which is not sufficiently studied under the current DIF literature. The four methods compared are logistic…

Background: Numerous studies have investigated the relationships between various student, home and contextual factors and reading achievement. However, the relationship between such factors and reading attitudes has been investigated far less, despite the fact that theoretical frameworks of large-scale assessments and school effectiveness research…

Background: Large-scale cross-national studies designed to measure student achievement use different social, cultural, economic and other background variables to explain observed differences in that achievement. Prior to their inclusion into a prediction model, these variables are commonly scaled into latent background indices. To allow…

Background: English language proficiency is considered a basic skill that students from different language backgrounds are expected to master, independent of whether they are native or non-native speakers. Tests that measure language proficiency in non-native speakers are typically linked to the common European framework of reference for…

Background: In 2011 the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were conducted at fourth grade in a number of participating countries with a shared representative sample. In this article we investigate whether there are multidimensional proficiency patterns…