The Monitoring the Future (MTF) study monitors historical and developmental changes in substance use prevalence among key subgroups of the general U.S. adolescent and adult population. The current study first devised and evaluated a cohort-specific pooled analysis weighing procedure for the MTF panel study that weighted back to the initial 12th…

This research explores the effects of listening to music during exams for engineering college students. Students were given the option to listen to self-selected music while completing exams in three undergraduate engineering courses over four years. It was found that listening to music during an exam had no significant effect on the mean exam…

Propensity score matching was used to create intervention and comparison groups to compare academic outcomes of students with disabilities in the U.S. state of Indiana placed in more inclusive settings with those placed in less inclusive settings. Student and school demographic and outcome data were analyzed from the eighth grade in 2013 through…

Spatial abilities (SAs) are cognitive resources used to mentally manipulate representations of objects to solve problems. Haptic abilities (HAs) represent tactile interactions with real-world objects transforming somatic information into mental representations. Both are proposed to be factors in anatomy education, yet relationships between SAs and…

The subjective aspect of standard-setting is often criticized, yet data-driven standard-setting methods are rarely applied. Therefore, we applied a mixture Rasch model approach to setting performance standards across several testing programs of various sizes and compared the results to existing passing standards derived from traditional…

Many research studies have shown that lower-secondary school students' scientific literacy depends on their understanding of corresponding scientific concepts. Therefore, it is of great significance to model and assess students' conceptual understanding in learning specific scientific concepts, because it can reflect and diagnose students'…

A sample suffers range restriction (RR) when its variance is reduced comparing with its population variance and, in turn, it fails representing such population. If the RR occurs over the latent factor, not directly over the observed variable, the researcher deals with an indirect RR, common when using convenience samples. This work explores how…

The ability to perceive approximate numerosity is present in many animal species, and emerges early in human infants. Later in life, it is moderately heritable and associated with mathematical abilities, but the etiology of the Approximate Number System (ANS) and its degree of independence from other cognitive abilities in infancy is unknown.…

Purpose: There are many aspects of words that can influence our lexical processing, and the words we are exposed to influence our opportunities for language and reading development. The purpose of this study is to establish a more comprehensive understanding of the lexical challenges and opportunities students face. Method: We explore the latent…

Much of modern education has focused on developing individuals' skills to be productive parts of society. The developed skills can become enablers of financial stability, independence and economic security. Yet, on a relative basis, considerably less effort is expended on building the financial skills for individuals to preserve their wealth and…

Feedback is an important component of online instruction. Few experiments have examined combined types of feedback (teacher feedback or student self-assessment) compared to extra practice with each on student learning. In this study, the experimental effectiveness of four methods of feedback delivery on students' acquisition of behavioral…

This study examined the effect of specific disciplinary actions such as in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, and expulsion on student achievement in public high schools. School discipline data from 1291 students educated within a school district in Tennessee were obtained and analyzed against Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System…

The purpose of this study was to examine any differences in test scores between three different online versions of the Mental Cutting Test (MCT). The MCT was developed to quantify a rotational and proportion construct of spatial ability and has been used extensively to assess spatial ability. This test was developed in 1938 as a paper-and-pencil…

This study examines the correlation between i-Ready and FSA (Florida Standards Assessment) exam scores to investigate whether high scores in the i-Ready exam are associated with a solid performance in the FSA exam. Correlation coefficients were calculated after scaling the data, revealing strong positive correlations between i-Ready and FSA scores…

In this study, it was aimed to examine the effect of missing data in different patterns and sizes on test equating methods under the NEAT design for different factors. For this purpose, as part of this study, factors such as sample size, average difficulty level difference between the test forms, difference between the ability distribution,…