This report describes the process of developing and validating the enhanced ACT. The report describes the changes made to the test content and the processes by which these design decisions were implemented. The authors describe how they shared the overall scope of the enhancements, including the initial blueprints, with external expert panels,…

Published work on vocabulary assessment has grown substantially in the last 10 years, but it is still somewhat outside the mainstream of the field. There has been a recent call for those developing vocabulary tests to apply professional standards to their work, especially in validating their instruments for specified purposes before releasing them…

As access to smartphones and emerging technologies has become ubiquitous in our daily lives and in language learning, technology-mediated social interaction has become common in teaching and assessing L2 speaking. The changing ecology of L2 spoken interaction provides language educators and testers with opportunities for renewed test design and…

Computer-based educational assessments often include items that involve drag-and-drop responses. There are different ways that drag-and-drop items can be laid out and different choices that test developers can make when designing these items. Currently, these decisions are based on experts' professional judgments and design constraints, rather…

Background: Variations in the skill profiles of learners have become an important research area in recent years. However, there is a lack of empirical research on this topic in Japan. We conducted three studies to address this gap. Methods: Study 1 investigated the characteristics of the flat and uneven skill profiles of Japanese learners of…

This article presents a review of research that has investigated ways of measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language (L2), focusing on grammar. It begins by defining implicit and explicit knowledge in terms of a distinguishing set of criteria. Two ways of investigating implicit knowledge are discussed -- through experimental…

The International English Language Test System (IELTS) is one of the most reputable English tests that is used to assess the language proficiency of those who intend to study or work in an English speaking context. It is one of the most largescale proficiency tests which affects the lives of many students, as well as immigrants as the results of…

Although content validity--how well each item of an instrument represents the construct being measured--is foundational in the development of an instrument, statistical validity is also important to the decisions that are made based on the instrument. The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate how simulation studies can be used to assist…

College instructors in the United States usually make their own decisions about how to design course exams. Even though summative course exams are well known to be important to student success, we know little about the decision making of instructors when designing course exams. To probe how instructors design exams for introductory biology, we…

Cognitive assessment of young children contributes to high-stakes decisions because results are often used to determine eligibility for early intervention and special education. Previous reviews of cognitive measures for young children highlighted concerns regarding adequacy of standardization samples, steep item gradients, and insufficient floors…

Language testing means taking decisions: about the test taker's results, but also about the test construct and the measures taken in order to ensure quality. This article takes the German test "telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule" as an example to illustrate this decision-making process in an academic context. The test is used for university…

In many practical testing situations, alternate test forms from the same testing program are not strictly parallel to each other and instead the test forms exhibit small psychometric differences. This article investigates the potential practical impact that these small psychometric differences can have on expected classification accuracy. Ten…

Suggestions for software design in computer managed testing (CMT) cover instructions to testees, their physical format, provision of practice items, and time limit information; test item presentation, physical format, discussion of task demands, review capabilities, and rate of presentation; pedagogically helpful utilities; typefonts; vocabulary;…

Most seasoned test developers recognize the importance of thoughtful decision making when constructing a test. Unfortunately, many classroom achievement tests are created by novice test developed who have not received sufficient instruction in item writing (G. Gulliksen, 1986; R. J. Stiggins, 1991). The result is often a test that is poorly…

The feasibility of constructing test forms with practically equivalent cut scores using judges' estimates of item difficulty as target "statistical" specifications was investigated. Test forms with equivalent judgmental cut scores (based on judgments of item difficulty) were assembled using items from six operational forms of the…