This study assessed unidimensionality and occurrence of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) in Mathematics and English Language items of Osun State Qualifying Examination. The study made use of secondary data. The results showed that OSQ Mathematics (-0.094 = r = 0.236) and English Language items (-0.095 = r = 0.228) were unidimensional. Also,…

The research reported in this article investigates differential item functioning (DIF) in a listening comprehension test. The study explores the relationship between test-taker age and the items' language domains across multiple test forms. The data comprise test-taker responses (N = 2,861) to a total of 133 unique items, 46 items of which were…

This study investigated whether measures of verbal working memory are less sensitive to children's socioeconomic background than traditional vocabulary measures. Participants were 120 school beginners, divided into high and low socioeconomic groups. The groups contained equal numbers of English first-language and second-language speakers. All were…

When standardized English-language tests are administered to test takers worldwide, the test-taking population could be varied on a number of personal and educational characteristics such as age, gender, first language, and academic discipline. As test tasks and test items may not always be prepared keeping this diversity of characteristics in…

Clues in the answers given to the Spanish Advanced Placement Examination questions can identify the test-taker as having learned the language in the classroom or as a native speaker. The Educational Testing Service has found mechanisms to ensure that the tests are equally suited to the two groups. (MSE)

This paper examines the nature of confidence in relation to cognitive abilities, personality traits, and metacognition. Confidence was measured as it was expressed in answers to each test item during the administration of reading and listening sections of the TOEFL® iBT. The confidence scores were correlated with the accuracy scores from the TOEFL…

In a study of the detection of test item bias, Chinese speakers and Spanish speakers were administered a measure of pronunciation accuracy for the (d) and (z) morphemes. Six indices were calculated for each item: item difficulty, point biserial correlation coefficient, item variance, chi-square, Rasch logit of difficulty, and the average…