Intelligence tests have been used in the United States since the early 1900s for assessing soldiers during World War I (Kaufman & Harrison, 2008; White & Hall, 1980). Presently, cognitive assessments are used in school, civil service, military, clinical, and industry settings (White & Hall, 1980). Although the results of these…

Purpose: In grading, one of the most common errors is made in combining two or more different test scores. This study aimed to investigate the agreement of grades calculated by weighting raw scores and standard scores. Research Methods: In this simulation study, data were simulated for midterm and final measurements. Nine conditions [3 (class…

There has been a marked increase in accommodation requests from students with disabilities at both the postsecondary education level and on high-stakes examinations. As such, accurate identification and quantification of normative impairment is essential for equitable provision of accommodations. Considerable diversity currently exists in methods…

Hiring the most capable students to serve in the RA role should be a top priority for housing departments due to their critical role as front-line student success employees. The effort to identify and hire RAs typically includes a substantial investment of personnel resources in hiring processes, where candidates are typically evaluated across…

Speeded tests set time limits so that few examinees can reach all items, and power tests allow most test-takers sufficient time to attempt all items. Educational achievement tests are sometimes described as "timed power tests" because the amount of time provided is intended to allow nearly all students to complete the test, yet this…

The objectives of this research were 1) to study the relationship between student factors, English language instructor factors, and environment factors with students' achievement in English language learning and 2) to develop equations to forecast factors affecting students' achievement in English language learning. The population used in this…

This experiment investigated interactions between lower- and higher-level processing when reading in a second language (L2). We conducted an eye-tracking experiment with the within-subject manipulation inconsistency (to tap higher-level coherence-building) crossed with a within-subject manipulation of word-processing difficulty (to alter the ease…

This study aimed to compare selection patterns of distractors (incorrect options) according to test taker proficiency regarding Japanese students' summarization skills of an English paragraph. Participants included 414 undergraduate students, and the test comprised three summarization process types--deletion, generalization, and integration.…

Researchers in higher education frequently evaluate institutional effectiveness as the difference between an actual and predicted graduation rate, but little is known about whether such a method is reliable or valid. This study examines the measurement properties of effectiveness scores derived from regression residuals for community colleges in…

We describe the development and initial validity assessment of the 20-item BioCalculus Assessment (BCA), with the objective of comparing undergraduate life science students' understanding of calculus concepts in different courses with alternative emphases (with and without focus on biological applications). The development process of the BCA…

Over the last decades, the percentage of the age group choosing to pursue university studies has increased significantly across the world. At the same time, there are university teachers who believe that the standards have fallen. There is little research on whether students nowadays demonstrate knowledge or abilities similar to that of the…

Universitas 21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems (U21 Ranking) is one of the three new ranking systems appearing in 2012. In contrast with the other systems, U21 Ranking uses countries as the unit of analysis. It has several features which lend it with greater trustworthiness, but it also shared some methodological issues with the other…

GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) scaled scores convey the same level of ability over time, and GMAT percentiles convey the competitiveness of scores relative to today's GMAT test takers. In an earlier column, the author discussed the role of the GMAT scaled scores and percentiles. Here, he gets more technical and discusses how GMAT scaled…

Although researchers in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education are currently using several methods to analyze learning gains from pre- and posttest data, the most commonly used approaches have significant shortcomings. Chief among these is the inability to distinguish whether differences in learning gains are due…

Frustrations with traditional testing led a group of teachers at the English for adults program at Universidad EAFIT (Colombia) to design tests aligned with the institutional teaching philosophy and classroom practices. This article reports on a study of an item-by-item evaluation of a series of English exams for validity and reliability in an…