The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international comparative study of student performance in reading literacy at the fourth grade. PIRLS 2016 marks the fourth iteration of the study, which has been conducted every 5 years since 2001. New to the PIRLS assessment in 2016, ePIRLS provides a computer-based extension to…

An appropriate estimate of statistical power is critical for the design of intervention studies. Although the inclusion of a pretest covariate in the test of the primary outcome can increase statistical power, samples selected on the basis of pretest performance may demonstrate range restriction on the selection measure and other correlated…

The study examined the relationship between teachers' utilization of school facilities and academic achievement of student nurses in Human Biology in schools of Nursing in Akwa Ibom State. Four (4) specific objectives, four (4) research questions and four (4) null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Ex-post facto survey design was…

The purpose of this study was to explore the degree of grain size of the attributes and the sample sizes that can support accurate parameter recovery with the General Diagnostic Model (GDM) for a large-scale international assessment. In this resampling study, bootstrap samples were obtained from the 2003 Grade 8 TIMSS in Mathematics at varying…

The authors' purpose was to explore the effects of a supplementary, guided, silent reading intervention with 80 struggling third-grade readers who were retained at grade level as a result of poor performance on the reading portion of a criterion referenced state assessment. The students were distributed in 11 elementary schools in a large, urban…

Six monographs on the Rasch model are summarized. The first gives a historical perspective on the application of the Rasch model in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. The remaining papers summarize research on the Rasch model. The research in Monograph II lead to the conclusion that random samples are not needed to calibrate item levels in…

Because latent trait models require that large numbers of items be calibrated or that testing of the same large group be repeated, item parameter estimates are often obtained by administering separate tests to different groups and "linking" the results to construct an adequate item pool. Four issues were studied, based upon the analysis…

The adequacy of equipercentile, linear, one-parameter (Rasch), and three-parameter logistic item-response theory procedures for equating 12 forms of five tests of general educational development were compared. Results indicated the equating method adequacy depends on a variety of factors such as test characteristics, equating design, and sample…

The stability of Rasch test item difficulty parameters was investigated under varying conditions. Data were taken from a mathematics achievement test administered to over 2,000 Australian students. The experiments included: (1) relative stability of the Rasch, traditional, and z-item difficulty parameters using different sample sizes and designs;…