Studies of data use illuminate ways in which education professionals have used test scores and other evidence relevant to students' learning--in action in their own contexts of work--to make decisions about their practice. These studies raise instructive challenges for a validity theory that focuses on intended interpretations and uses of test…

ACT reporting categories and ACT Readiness Ranges are new features added to the ACT score reports starting in fall 2016. For each reporting category, the number correct score, the maximum points possible, the percent correct, and the ACT Readiness Range, along with an indicator of whether the reporting category score falls within the Readiness…

In adolescence research, the treatment of measurement reliability is often fragmented, and it is not always clear how different reliability coefficients are related. We show that generalizability theory (G-theory) is a comprehensive framework of measurement reliability, encompassing all other reliability methods (e.g., Pearson "r,"…

Variation in test performance among examinees from different regions or national jurisdictions is often partially attributed to differences in the degree of content correspondence between local school or training program curricula, and the test of interest. This posited relationship between test-curriculum correspondence, or "alignment,"…

The Children's Psychological Processing Scale (CPPS), authored by Milton J. Dehn and published by Schoolhouse Educational Services in 2012, is a third-party rating scale that can be administered to teachers who are familiar with children ages 5 to 12. The measure is designed to identify psychological processing deficits in children who are…

There is a need for valid methods to assess the readiness for clinical practice of medical graduates. This study evaluates the validity of Utrecht Hamburg Trainee Responsibility for Unfamiliar Situations Test (UHTRUST), an authentic simulation procedure to assess whether medical trainees are ready to be entrusted with unfamiliar clinical tasks…

This tutorial addresses possible sources of confusion in interpreting trait scores from the bifactor model. The bifactor model may be used when subscores are desired, either for formative feedback on an achievement test or for theoretically different constructs on a psychological test. The bifactor model is often chosen because it requires fewer…

Background/Context: Validity issues are often discussed in technical terms, but the context changes when measures enter broad public debate, and a wider range of interests come into play. Purpose: This article, part of a special section of TCR, considers the political dimensions of validity questions as raised by a keynote address and panel…

Errors don't exist in our data, but they serve a vital function. Reality is complicated, but our models need to be simple in order to be manageable. We assume that attributes are invariant over some conditions of observation, and once we do that we need some way of accounting for the variability in observed scores over these conditions of…

The purpose of this report is to review ETS psychometric contributions that focus on test scores. Two major sections review contributions based on assessing test scores' measurement characteristics and other contributions about using test scores as predictors in correlational and regression relationships. An additional section reviews additional…

Accurate interpretations of large-scale assessment results and sound judgments about students' mathematical literacy depend on these assessments' validity and reliability. One important type of evidence towards this validation is the dimensionality analysis, which explores the conformity between the intended factorial structure (related closely to…

A primary goal of standards-based statewide achievement tests is to classify students into achievement levels that enable valid inferences about student content area knowledge and skill. Explicating how knowledge and skills are expected to differ in complexity in achievement level descriptors, and how that complexity is related to empirical item…

Researchers have expressed concern about "implementation" fidelity in intervention research but have not extended that concern to "assessment" fidelity, or the extent to which pre-/posttests are administered and interpreted as intended. When studying reading interventions, data gathering heavily influences the identification of…

In recent years, the social sciences have seen a resurgence in the study of divergent thinking (DT) measures. However, many of these recent advances have focused on abstract, decontextualized DT tasks (e.g., list as many things as you can think of that have wheels). This study provides a new perspective by exploring the reliability and validity…

The assessment of young children in early childhood special education is a central area of educational practice. The results of child assessments often have significant implications for young children, their families, and the programs that serve them, including eligibility for special education services, instructional planning, and documentation…