Learning chemistry is a hard task for many secondary school students; thus, students find it tough to score better marks in chemistry. Researchers have identified many reasons and suggested lots of alternatives to overcome difficulties in chemistry. This paper focuses on whether the test item construction has any role in the response pattern of…

Writing anxiety is one of the most essential factors influencing language learning. The current study is to explore the effect of sentence-making practice on reducing writing anxiety of two classes of adult EFL learners, one in low-intermediate level (LI learners), the other in high-intermediate level (HI learners). Two classes received two-week…

Laboratory studies have established a negative relationship between the color red and academic performance. This research examined whether this effect would generalize to classroom performance and whether anxiety and negative affect might mediate the effect. In two studies, students taking classroom exams were randomly assigned an exam color. We…

The present study was motivated by the recognition that standard errors (SEs) of item response theory (IRT) model parameters are often of immediate interest to practitioners and that there is currently a lack of comparative research on different SE (or error variance-covariance matrix) estimation procedures. The present study investigated item…

In this study, we contrast results from two differential item functioning (DIF) approaches (manifest and latent class) by the number of items and sources of items identified as DIF using data from an international reading assessment. The latter approach yielded three latent classes, presenting evidence of heterogeneity in examinee response…

In this study we investigated when an equating conversion line is problematic in terms of gaps and clumps. We suggest using the conditional standard error of measurement (CSEM) to measure the scale scores that are inappropriate in the overall raw-to-scale transformation.

In this article, E. Matthew Schulz responds to Adam Wyse's article, "Construct Maps as a Foundation for Standard Setting." In doing so, he asserts that one of the most important ideas in Wyse's work is that information used in standard setting needs to be better represented through the use of graphics. However, he's not…

Polytomous attributes, particularly those defined as part of the test development process, can provide additional diagnostic information. The present research proposes the polytomous generalized deterministic inputs, noisy, "and" gate (pG-DINA) model to accommodate such attributes. The pG-DINA model allows input from substantive experts…

In this article, we discuss and illustrate two centering and anchoring options available in differential item functioning (DIF) detection studies based on the hierarchical generalized linear and generalized linear mixed modeling frameworks. We compared and contrasted the assumptions of the two options, and examined the properties of their DIF…

In organizational and educational practices, sensitivity reviews are commonly advocated techniques for reducing test bias and enhancing fairness. In the present paper, results from two studies are reported which investigate how effective individuals are at detecting problematic test content and the influence such content has on important testing…

Even when relatively infrequent, careless and random responding (C/RR) can have robust effects on individual and group data and thereby distort clinical evaluations and research outcomes. Given such potential adverse impacts and the broad use of self-report measures when appraising addictions and addictive behavior, the detection of C/RR can…

Optimal test-design methods are applied to rule-based item generation. Three different cases of automated test design are presented: (a) test assembly from a pool of pregenerated, calibrated items; (b) test generation on the fly from a pool of calibrated item families; and (c) test generation on the fly directly from calibrated features defining…

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is an important step in the data analysis of large-scale testing programs. Nowadays, many such programs endorse matrix sampling designs to reduce the load on examinees, such as the balanced incomplete block (BIB) design. These designs pose challenges to the traditional DIF analysis methods. For example,…

Koen and Yonelinas (2010) contrasted the recollection and encoding variability accounts of the finding that old items are associated with more variable memory strength than new items. The study indicated that (a) increasing encoding variability did not lead to increased measures of old item variance, and (b) old item variance was directly related…

When test forms that have equal total test difficulty and number of items vary in difficulty and length within sub-content areas, an examinee's estimated score may vary across equivalent forms, depending on how well his or her true ability in each sub-content area aligns with the difficulty of items and number of items within these areas.…