Background: Examinees may not make enough effort when responding to test items if the assessment has no consequence for them. These disengaged responses can be problematic in low-stakes, large-scale assessments because they can bias item parameter estimates. However, the amount of bias, and whether this bias is similar across administrations, is…

To demonstrate how methodologies for assessing reading comprehension can grow out of views of the construct suggested in the reading research literature, we constructed tasks and carried out psychometric analyses that were framed in accordance with 2 leading reading models. In estimating item difficulty and subsequently, examinee proficiency, an…

Despite calls for engaging assessments targeting young language learners (YLLs) between 8 and 13 years old, what makes assessment tasks engaging and how such task characteristics affect measurement quality have not been well studied empirically. Furthermore, there has been a dearth of validity research about technology-enhanced speaking tests for…