The purpose of this study was originally to create an operational definition of the "appearance of competence" to design valid questions for educational professionals supporting twice-exceptional (2e) learners to create a testing instrument. Through the methodological process of grounded theory, a replacement research question emerged as…

The current study explored the assessment of English Language Learners' argumentative speaking ability. Specifically, the study involved the development and administration of a scenario-based test that aimed to measure learners' ability to display competency in L2 argumentative speaking ability by building an argument from factual evidence and…

This study aimed to develop and validate the Institutional Racial Bias Cost (IRBC) scale, a race-focused construct grounded in Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT) (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020), to capture the experiences of Black students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Drawing on cognitive interviewing procedures and qualitative…

The importance of sexual education for students with disabilities cannot be overstated. The United Nations states that students with disabilities should have access to the same range and quality of sexual education as their nondisabled peers (Holmes, 2021). Despite this, students with disabilities, especially those with moderate to extensive…

This dissertation provides a start-to-finish description of development, administration, and validation for an online middle-school physics test using a DCM framework with response-time. The first paper illustrated the process of implementing DCM with a careful selection of the content domain and a simulation approach for a Q-matrix construction.…

This study engages in a rigorous process to develop an instrument, College Students' Financial Stress (CSFS). This instrument aims to assess college students' generalized financial stress, or financial unsafety, to provide administrators with a tool to gauge students' mental well-being and financial experiences in higher education. Accurately…

Quality and accountability remain meaningful discussions for university-based traditional educator preparation programs (EPPs) that prepare most new teachers. A fundamental premise of this study is to create rigorous and transparent measures that are intentionally designed and aligned with pre-service teacher (PST) readiness standards, which is…

Nursing education programs are faced with urgent demands to transition to competency-based education (CBE) to address the limitations of the nursing workforce. The AACN (2021) has developed the Essentials, or the core competencies for graduating entry- and advanced-level nurses to inform CBE. A concept analysis of Foundational Competence was…

This study investigated the impact of scoring polytomous items later on measurement precision, classification accuracy, and test security in mixed-format adaptive testing. Utilizing the shadow test approach, a simulation study was conducted across various test designs, lengths, number and location of polytomous item. Results showed that while…

This dissertation aimed to narrow the gap between learning and exercising leadership. It tried to address three main gaps in the field of leadership development assessment as its main research objectives: 1) the measurement gap which concerns the divergence between academic and industry perspectives on leadership development 2) the…

Multistage adaptive testing (MST) has become popular in the testing industry because the research has shown that it combines the advantages of both linear tests and item-level computer adaptive testing (CAT). The previous research efforts primarily focused on MST design issues such as panel design, module length, test length, distribution of test…

The current study involved the development, scaling, and validation of a new, brief, strength-based measure of children's ecological support, as rated by their parents. The scaling and validation of the Child and Youth Ecological Assets Scale--Parent Form (C-YEAS-P) took place through two studies. The first study involved 500 parents who were…

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by profound social, emotional, and cognitive growth, in addition to self-discovery, particularly concerning sexuality. However, misinformation or inadequate education can lead to detrimental decision-making, impacting both physical and emotional well-being. Inadequate sexual education contributes…

In the nascent field of human-nature relational values, there is a growing body of literature suggesting their transformative potential in sustainability education. The ability to analytically distinguish relational values from other valuations can both inform pedagogical approaches and help to identify how people understand and value their…

The idea of student engagement as a predictor of student success was first introduced by Alexander Astin (1974; 1984) who studied student involvement. The connection of student involvement and student success has led to the focus on student and how we measure it to ensure that institutions are doing all they can to improve outcomes. Nothing has…