Gender differences in item nonresponse are well-documented in high-stakes achievement tests, where female students are shown to omit more items than male students. These gender differences in item nonresponse are often linked to differential risk-taking strategies, with females being risk-averse and unwilling to guess on an item, even if it could…

The objective of the present study was to investigate item-, examinee-, and country-level correlates of rapid guessing (RG) in the context of the 2018 PISA science assessment. Analyzing data from 267,148 examinees across 71 countries showed that over 50% of examinees engaged in RG on an average proportion of one in 10 items. Descriptive…

Disengaged test taking tends to be most prevalent with low-stakes tests. This has led to questions about the validity of aggregated scores from large-scale international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, as previous research has found a meaningful correlation between the mean engagement and mean performance of countries. The current study, using…

Changepoints are abrupt variations in a sequence of data in statistical inference. In educational and psychological assessments, it is pivotal to properly differentiate examinees' aberrant behaviors from solution behavior to ensure test reliability and validity. In this paper, we propose a sequential Bayesian changepoint detection algorithm to…

The item responses of examinees who rapid-guess, who do not spend enough time reading and engaging with an item, will not reflect their true ability on that item. Rapid-disengagement refers to rapidly selecting a response to multiple-choice items (i.e., rapid-guess), omitting items, or providing short-unrelated answers to open-ended items in an…

When there are no personal consequences associated with test performance for examinees, rapid guessing (RG) is a concern and can differ between subgroups. To date, the impact of differential RG on item-level measurement invariance has received minimal attention. To that end, a simulation study was conducted to examine the robustness of the…

The study examined the relationship between examinees' test-taking effort and their accuracy rate on items from the PISA 2015 assessment. The 10% normative threshold method was applied on Science multiple-choice items in the Cyprus sample to detect rapid guessing behavior. Results showed that the extent of rapid guessing across simple and complex…

Examining the testing processes, as well as the scores, is needed for a complete understanding of validity and fairness of computer-based assessments. Examinees' rapid-guessing and insufficient familiarity with computers have been found to be major issues that weaken the validity arguments of scores. This study has three goals: (a) improving…