Maintaining score interchangeability and scale consistency is crucial for any testing programs that administer multiple forms across years. The use of a multiple linking design, which involves equating a new form to multiple old forms and averaging the conversions, has been proposed to control scale drift. However, the use of multiple linking…

Researching. Synthesizing. Reasoning with evidence. The PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments are clearly setting their sights on complex thinking skills. Researchers Joan Herman and Robert Linn look at the new assessments to see how they stack up against Norman Webb's depth of knowledge framework as well as against current state tests. The…

In this commentary, Rebecca Kopriva examines the articles in this special issue by drawing on her experience from three series of investigations examining how English language learners (ELLs) and other students perceive what test items ask and how they can successfully represent what they know. The first series examined the effect of different…

The American Chemical Society Examinations Institute (ACS-EI) has recently developed the Exams Data Analysis Spread (EDAS) as a tool to help instructors conduct customizable analyses of their student data from ACS exams. The EDAS calculations allow instructors to analyze their students' performances both at the total score and individual item…

Multiple choice writing guidelines are decidedly split on the use of "none of the above" (NOTA), with some authors discouraging and others advocating its use. Moreover, empirical studies of NOTA have produced mixed results. Generally, these studies have utilized NOTA as either the correct response or a distractor and assessed its effect…

The demand for test items far outstrips the current supply. This increased demand can be attributed, in part, to the transition to computerized testing, but, it is also linked to dramatic changes in how 21st century educational assessments are designed and administered. One way to address this growing demand is with automatic item generation.…

This study investigates the typical textual features that are most frequently targeted in short-answer reading comprehension questions of the Cambridge University "O" Level English Paper 2. Test writers' awareness of how textual features impact on understanding of meanings in text decisions will determine to great extent their decisions…

Methods for detecting differential item functioning (DIF) and item bias are typically used in the process of item analysis when developing new measures; adapting existing measures for different populations, languages, or cultures; or more generally validating test score inferences. In 2007 in "Language Assessment Quarterly," Zumbo…

In item response theory test scaling/equating with the three-parameter model, the scaling coefficients A and B have no impact on the c-parameter estimates of the test items since the cparameter estimates are not adjusted in the scaling/equating procedure. The main research question in this study concerned how serious the consequences would be if…

"The Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities" (WJ IV COG) is an individually administered measure of psychometric intellectual abilities designed for ages 2 to 90+. The measure was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt-Riverside in 2014. Frederick Shrank, Kevin McGrew, and Nancy Mather are the authors. Richard Woodcock, the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the factor structure of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale and examine possible wording effects on a sample of 1,429 students from the United Arab Emirates University. Correlated traits-correlated uniqueness as well as correlated traits-correlated methods were used to examine…

This preliminary study was conducted in interior of Malaysia. The study employed the Body Coordination Two Tier Concept Test to assess students' understandings of body coordination topic. The test consisted of 14 questions as two tier question style. The students needed to select the answer and write down the justifications of each answer.…

The Student Engagement in Mathematics Scale (SEMS) is a self-report measure that was created to assess three dimensions of student engagement (social, emotional, and cognitive) in mathematics based on a single day of class. In the current study, the SEMS was administered to a sample of 360 fifth graders from a large Mid-Atlantic district. The…

The quality of national examination items plays an enormous role in identifying students' competencies mastery and their difficulties. This study aims to identify the difficult items in the Junior High School Mathematics National Examination, to find the factors that cause students' difficulty and to reveal the strategies that the teachers and the…

Concept inventories have been determined to be useful assessment tools for evaluating students' knowledge, particularly in the sciences. However, these assessment tools must be validated to reflect as accurately as possible students' understanding of concepts. One possible threat to this validation is what previous literature calls the item order…