This study investigated the role of item formats in the performance of 206 nonnative speakers of English on expressive skills (i.e., speaking and writing). Test scores were drawn from the field test of the "Pearson Test of English Academic" for Chinese, French, Hebrew, and Korean native speakers. Four item formats, including…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive health literacy assessment tool for young adult college students. Participants: Participants were 144 undergraduate students. Methods: Two hundred and twenty-nine questions were developed, which were based on concepts identified by the US Department of Health and Human Services,…

Since 2010, the whole national cohort Key Stage 2 (KS2) National Curriculum test in science in England has been replaced with a sampling test taken by pupils at the age of 11 from a nationally representative sample of schools annually. The study reported in this paper compares the performance of different subgroups of the samples (classified by…

As more instructors articulate learning objectives for their students within one course, or academic staff collaborate to articulate learning outcomes for programs, a robust means to assess student performance within these becomes increasingly important. The Examinations Institute of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Division of Chemical…

The purpose of this study is to explore patterns in model-data fit related to subgroups of test takers from a large-scale writing assessment. Using data from the SAT, a calibration group was randomly selected to represent test takers who reported that English was their best language from the total population of test takers (N = 322,011). A…

The promotion of physical fitness has been a key objective of physical education for more than a century. During this period, physical education has evolved to accommodate changing views on fitness and health. The purpose of this article is to discuss issues with fitness assessment and fitness education central to the new Presidential Youth…

The US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), requested testing of questions about school bullying that are part of the School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The main purpose of this cognitive research was to test proposed changes…

This paper reports how the context in which a mathematics item is embedded impacts on students' performance. The performance of Year 10 students on four PISA items was compared with performance on variants with more familiar contexts. Performance was not better when they solved items with more familiar contexts but there was some evidence that…

We describe the conceptualization, development, and piloting of two instruments--a survey and a scenario-based assessment--designed to assess, teachers' recognition of an obligation to the discipline of mathematics and the extent to which teachers justify actions that deviate from what is normative on account of this obligation. We show how we…

Students who complete kindergarten with an inadequate knowledge of basic mathematics concepts and skills will continue to experience difficulties with mathematics throughout their elementary and secondary years and may be at increased risk for math disabilities. There is a critical need to identify students experiencing difficulties in mathematics…

A 2011 report by the Department of Education states that understanding how teachers use results from formative assessments to guide their practice is necessary to improve instruction. Chemistry teachers have goals for items in their formative assessments, but the degree of alignment between what is assessed by these items and the teachers' goals…

The research aimed to investigate environmental knowledge, team working skills, and desirable behaviors of students learning through the good science thinking moves method with metacognition techniques. The sample group included Matthayomsuksa 6 students from Nadoon Prachasan School, Nadoon District, Maha Sarakham Province. The research tools were…

As the application of nanotechnology in everyday life impacts society, it becomes critical for citizens to have a scientific basis upon which to judge their perceived hopes and fears of 'nano'. Although multiple instruments have been designed for assessing attitudinal and affective aspects of nano, surprisingly little work has focused on…

"Scientific argumentation," defined as the ability to develop and analyze scientific claims, support claims with evidence from investigations of the natural world, and explain and evaluate the reasoning that connects the evidence to the claim, is a critical component of current science standards and is consistent with "Common Core…

For traditional methods of observed-score equating with anchor-test designs, such as chain and poststratification equating, it is difficult to satisfy the criteria of equity and population invariance. Their equatings are therefore likely to be biased. The bias in these methods was evaluated against a simple local equating method in which the…