A regional business school chose to self develop an assessment test of the fundamental concepts of the undergraduate business core. Above and beyond the demands of AACSB accreditation, faculty identified feedback from such a test as an essential precursor to changing both overall curriculum and individual class content. The authors describe the…

To enhance test security of high stakes tests, it is vital to understand the way various exposure control strategies function under various IRT models. To that end the present dissertation focused on the performance of several exposure control strategies under the generalized partial credit model with an item pool of 100 and 200 items. These…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to empirically test items of a new measure designed to assess person-directed care (PDC) practices in long-term care. Design and Methods: After reviewing the literature, we identified five areas related to PDC: personhood, comfort care, autonomy, knowing the person, and support for relationships. We also…

Figural matrix items are a popular task type for assessing general intelligence (Spearman's g). Items of this kind can be constructed rationally, allowing the implementation of computerized generation algorithms. In this study, the influence of different task parameters on the degree of difficulty in matrix items was investigated. A sample of N =…

It is common practice in IRT to consider items as fixed and persons as random. Both, continuous and categorical person parameters are most often random variables, whereas for items only continuous parameters are used and they are commonly of the fixed type, although exceptions occur. It is shown in the present article that random item parameters…

Monte Carlo simulations with 20,000 replications are reported to estimate the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis regarding DIF using SIBTEST when there is DIF present and/or when impact is present due to differences on the primary dimension to be measured. Sample sizes are varied from 250 to 2000 and test lengths from 10 to 40 items.…

A surge of research has been conducted to examine memory editing mechanisms that help distinguish accurate from inaccurate memories. In the present experiment, the authors examined the ability of participants to use novelty detection, recollection rejection, and plausibility judgments to reject lures presented on a recognition memory test.…

Standard-setting methods are widely used to determine cut scores on a test that examinees must meet for a certain performance standard. Because standard setting is a measurement procedure, it is important to evaluate variability of cut scores resulting from the standard-setting process. Generalizability theory is used in this study to estimate…

Enrollments into first-year university biology courses may be very large, and therefore evaluating student learning can represent quite a challenge. In this article, we present our experience in assessing students by means of an assessment instrument called "Understand Before Choosing" (UBC). It has been used for six semesters, and its performance…

A primary assumption underlying several of the common methods for modeling item response data is unidimensionality, that is, test items tap into only one latent trait. This assumption can be assessed several ways, using nonlinear factor analysis and DETECT, a method based on the item conditional covariances. When multidimensionality is identified,…

Individuals with moderate to severe TBI often need extensive rehabilitation. To verify the effectiveness of intervention and design rehabilitation programs that meet individual's needs, precise and efficient outcome measures are crucial. Current assessments for TBI either focus on measuring impairments, such as neuropsychological tests or lack of…

Presented at the national conference for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2009. This discussed the development and implementation of the new SAT writing section.

Introduction: Health educators who teach professionals about evidence-based practice (EBP) need instruments to measure change in skills and knowledge. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the interrater reliability, internal consistency, and responsiveness of the Adapted Fresno Test (AFT) of competence in EBP. Methods: Reliability testing…

This study uses PISA cycle 3 field trial data to investigate the relationships between gender differential item functioning (DIF) across countries and test languages for science items and their formats and the four other dimensions defined in PISA framework: focus, context, competency, and scientific knowledge. The data used were collected from 60…

In operational testing programs using item response theory (IRT), item parameter invariance is threatened when an item appears in a different location on the live test than it did when it was field tested. This study utilizes data from a large state's assessments to model change in Rasch item difficulty (RID) as a function of item position change,…