Person-fit analyses are commonly used to detect aberrant responding in self-report data. Nonparametric person fit statistics do not require fitting a parametric test theory model and have performed well compared to other person-fit statistics. However, detection of aberrant responding has primarily focused on dominance response data, thus the…

Purpose: Vocal roughness is often present in many voice disorders but the assessment of roughness mainly depends on the subjective auditory-perceptual evaluation and lacks acoustic correlates. This study aimed to apply the concept of roughness in general sound quality perception to vocal roughness assessment and to characterize the relationship…

Nations, states, and districts must choose among an array of different approaches to measuring school effectiveness in implementing their accountability policies, and the choice can be difficult because different approaches yield different results. This study compares two approaches to computing school effectiveness: a "beating the odds"…

This dissertation investigates the application of network models in educational assessment across diverse learning settings, encompassing both clinical and classroom environments. As educational paradigms shift and digital tools become more embedded in learning processes, traditional assessment methods often fall short in effectively capturing the…

Although much research has compared the functioning between analytic and holistic rating scales, little research has compared the functioning of binary rating scales with other types of rating scales. This quantitative study set out to preliminarily and comparatively validate binary and analytic rating scales intended for use in formative…

All students deserve to attend programs and institutions that meet high quality standards. But different program goals, investments of time, and eligibility criteria make it difficult to set specific standards that will apply equally well to all types of programs and institutions. This report sets out principles for developing an accountability…

In the present study, two types of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) tools in science, Vocabulary Matching (VM) and Statement Verification for Science (SV-S), a modified Sentence Verification Technique, were compared. Specifically, this study aimed to determine whether the format of information presented (i.e., SV-S vs. VM) produces differences…

Measures of student disadvantage--or risk--are critical components of equity-focused education policies. However, the risk measures used in contemporary policies have significant limitations, and despite continued advances in data infrastructure and analytic capacity, there has been little innovation in these measures for decades. We develop a new…

The purpose of this note is to develop insight into the performance of the individual fixed-effects model when used to estimate wage returns to postsecondary schooling. We focus our attention on the returns to attending and completing community college. While other methods (instrumental variables, regression discontinuity) have been used to…

International scholarship programs for higher education attract a substantial body of funding each year from national governments, supranational bodies, large charitable foundations, higher education institutions, and many smaller organizations. With aims variously shaped by international development and public diplomacy considerations,…

This work asks one simple question: "how reliable is the method used by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to estimate projected rates of VET program completion?" In other words, how well do early projections align with actual completion rates some years later? Completion rates are simple to calculate with a…

Analyzing examinees' responses using cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) has the advantage of providing diagnostic information. To ensure the validity of the results from these models, differential item functioning (DIF) in CDMs needs to be investigated. In this article, the Wald test is proposed to examine DIF in the context of CDMs. This study…

Although evaluators often use an interrupted time series (ITS) design to test hypotheses about program effects, there are few empirical tests of the design's validity. We take a randomized experiment on an educational topic and compare its effects to those from a comparative ITS (CITS) design that uses the same treatment group as the experiment…

In this paper, I argue for more and better learning metrics in higher education, eventually through an international, comparative assessment of students' learning outcomes. Better learning measures may help to improve transparency in the system by addressing the information asymmetry problem. If not addressed adequately, the lack of transparency…

Common test items play an important role in equating multiple test forms under the common-item nonequivalent groups design. Inconsistent item parameter estimates among common items can lead to large bias in equated scores for IRT true score equating. Current methods extensively focus on detection and elimination of outlying common items, which…