A fair and valid assessment for every child, as mandated by legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 and the Improving America's School Act of 1994, must consider the complexity inherent in assessments for subgroups of students. Due to the rapid growth of the population of English language learners (ELLs) in the United…

In this study, retrospective interviews were used to investigate reliability (and thus validity) threats to a computerized ESL listening comprehension test administered at a university in the US. The participants in the investigation, six international graduate students, were asked to respond to semi- and open-ended questions during individual…

Recently the Educational Testing Service (ETS) has modified its Student Instructional Report II (SIR II) for use in online distance education courses. The SIR II is a second-generation survey based on more than thirty years of experience with student evaluations (Centra, 1998; Centra and Gaubatz, n.d.). The e-SIR II is based on the highly…

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to evaluate the educational program's training. The program used for this purpose was the Olympic Education Program, which has been implemented in Greek primary and secondary schools since 2000. First, the face validity of items was evaluated, second, the pool of the items selected was factor…

This article describes efforts to examine the validity of a screening process that provides objective data for multidisciplinary team meetings where consideration is being given to teacher referral of a student for assessment and possible placement in special education. In this study, the accuracy with which this process, called Problem Validation…

Introduction: For postgraduate training of doctors there is a need for valid and reliable instruments to assess their daily performance. Various instruments have been suggested, some of which use incognito simulated patients (SPs). These methods are resource intensive. Computerised Case-based testing (CCT) is logistically simpler and may still…

This study examined the validity and feasibility of a group-administered test of alphabetic reading skills for first-grade students. Two versions of a phonemic spelling test (production and multiple-choice) were administered in classroom groups to 153 students. Measures of vocabulary, phoneme awareness, letter sound knowledge, phonemic decoding,…

To further the understanding of ELL (under) achievement and broaden the current scope of OTL models, the primary focus of this study was to investigate process and content opportunities that are particularly relevant to improving ELL achievement with particular attention to the relationship between opportunities to acquire academic language and…

This investigation seeks to confirm a computer-based approach that can be used to score concept maps (Poindexter & Clariana, 2004) and then describes the concurrent criterion-related validity of these scores. Participants enrolled in two graduate courses (n=24) were asked to read about and research online the structure and function of the heart…

Test validity is predicated on there being a lack of bias in tasks, items, or test content. It is well-known that factors such as test candidates' mother tongue, life experiences, and socialization practices of the wider community may serve to inject subtle interactions between individuals' background and the test content. When the gender of the…

This study compared retrospective reports of childhood sexual and physical abuse as assessed by two measures: the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), which uses a Likert-type scaling approach, and the Computer Assisted Maltreatment Inventory (CAMI), which employs a behaviorally specific means of assessment. Participants included 1,195…

This article enquires into the role of gender in the use of different forms of aggression and in the appearance of conflicts within the interactions between students of 12-17 years of age. In order to understand both aspects, the conversational fragments of students and teachers from two high schools are expounded; discourses obtained using a…

Background: Despite a large body of evidence regarding reliable indicators of language deficits in young children, there has not been a standardized, quick screen for language impairment. The Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test was therefore designed as a short, reliable assessment of young children's language abilities. Aims: GAPS was…

Background: Little is known about the predictive validity of hyperkinetic disorder (HKD) as defined by the Diagnostic Criteria for Research for mental and behavioral disorders of the tenth edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10; World Health Organization, 1993), particularly when the diagnosis is given to younger children.…

This article discusses some of the challenges that researchers working in the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition (SLA) and in the field of language testing face in developing comparable and culturally and cognitively appropriate data collection and language assessment tools for bilingual children from rural minority-language…