In this study, we used the Rasch measurement to investigate the fairness of the listening section of a national computerized high-stakes English test for differential item functioning (DIF) across gender subgroups. The computerized test format inspired us to investigate whether the items measure listening comprehension differently for females and…

Advances in technology have spurred innovations in secure assessment delivery. One such innovation, remote online proctoring, has become increasingly sophisticated and is gaining wider consideration for high-stakes testing. However, there is an absence of published research examining remote online proctoring and its effects on test scores and the…

Research on examinees' response changes on multiple-choice tests over the past 80 years has yielded some consistent findings, including that most examinees make score gains by changing answers. This study expands the research on response changes by focusing on a high-stakes admissions test--the Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning measures…

Background: Although on-demand testing is being increasingly used in many areas of assessment, it has not been adopted in high stakes examinations like the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and General Certificate of Education Advanced level (GCE A level) offered by awarding organisations (AOs) in the UK. One of the major issues…

This article details an investigation into the onscreen marking (OSM) of Liberal Studies (LS) in Hong Kong--where paper-based marking (PBM) of public examinations is being phased out and wholly superseded by OSM. The study involved 14 markers who had previously rated Liberal Studies scripts on screen in the 2009 Hong Kong Advanced Level…

Problem Statement: Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a sophisticated and efficient way of delivering examinations. In CAT, items for each examinee are selected from an item bank based on the examinee's responses to the items. In this way, the difficulty level of the test is adjusted based on the examinee's ability level. Instead of…

Recent developments of person-fit analysis in computerized adaptive testing (CAT) are discussed. Methods from statistical process control are presented that have been proposed to classify an item score pattern as fitting or misfitting the underlying item response theory (IRT) model in a CAT. Most person-fit research in CAT is restricted to…

Item parameter estimates vary for a variety of reasons, including estimation error, characteristics of the examinee samples, and context effects (e.g., item location effects, section location effects, etc.). Although we expect variation based on theory, there is reason to believe that observed variation in item parameter estimates exceeds what…