The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is one of the research-based assessments established by the physics education research community to measure students' understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Former works have often recorded the notion of gendered mean FCI scores favoring male students notably in the North American (NA) based studies. Nevertheless,…

Background: Working and interacting with people from diverse backgrounds have become common in Engineering. Research has indicated that engineering graduates face challenges while working with a diverse workforce. Therefore, it is vital for higher education institutions to help engineering students develop intercultural competence skills by…

Equating is a statistical procedure used to adjust for the difference in form difficulty such that scores on those forms can be used and interpreted comparably. In practice, however, equating methods are often implemented without considering the extent to which two forms differ in difficulty. The study aims to examine the effect of the magnitude…

There is widespread concern about declining literacy skills in recent young Japanese. The present study investigated how higher-level reading and writing proficiencies are underpinned by basic literacy skills in Japanese adolescents. From a large database of the most popular literacy exams in Japan, we retrospectively analyzed word- and text-level…

Background: Teacher quality matters for student achievement (Coleman, 1968; Rivkin et al., 2005; Rockoff, 2004; Aaronson et al., 2007) and later career success (Chetty et al., 2014). States use licensure exams as a quality screen believing that they are predictive of teaching effectiveness (Council et al., 2001). However, the evidence on the…

This report provides advice to policymakers and school leaders on the use of assessment centres as part of a teacher selection approach. It discusses the relationship between assessment centre scores prior to joining teaching, and teacher effectiveness over a six-year period. It draws from various stages of a wider research project, the overall…

As students are exposed to extreme temperatures with ever-increasing frequency, it is important to understand how such exposure affects student learning. In this paper we draw upon detailed student achievement data, combined with high-resolution weather records, to paint a clear portrait of the effect of temperature on student learning across a…

The aims of this reliability generalization study were to provide the overall alpha values of the California critical thinking disposition inventory (CCTDI) total score and subscales scores and investigate the characteristics of the studies that may be associated with the variability in the reliability values of the CCTDI total score and subscales…

This dissertation was designed to foster a deeper understanding of population invariance in the context of composite-score equating and provide practitioners with guidelines for addressing score equity concerns at the composite score level. The purpose of this dissertation was threefold. The first was to compare different composite equating…

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Stella Kim provides an overview of multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) equating. Traditional unidimensional item response theory (IRT) equating methods impose the sometimes untenable restriction on data that only a single ability is assessed. This module discusses potential sources of multidimensionality…

With the increasing use of automated scores in operational testing settings comes the need to understand the ways in which they can yield biased and unfair results. In this paper, we provide a brief survey of some of the ways in which the predictive methods used in automated scoring can lead to biased, and thus unfair automated scores. After…

We describe the development of 236 children with Angelman syndrome (AS) using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition. Multilevel linear mixed modeling approaches were used to explore differences between molecular subtypes and over time. Individuals with AS continue to make slow gains in development through at least age…

Our study examines the differential item functioning of the Counselor Competencies Scale--Revised (CCS-R) scores due to respondents' gender, the type of evaluation, and a combination of these two variables using a large sample (N = 1614). Implications of the findings are offered to inform counselor educators and supervisors using the CCS-R and…

In order to detect a wide range of aberrant behaviors, it can be useful to incorporate information beyond the dichotomous item scores. In this paper, we extend the l[subscript z] and l*[subscript z] person-fit statistics so that unusual behavior in item scores and unusual behavior in item distractors can be used as indicators of aberrance. Through…

Validity is a fundamental consideration of test development and test evaluation. The purpose of this study is to define and reify three key aspects of validity and validation, namely test-score interpretation, test-score use, and the claims supporting interpretation and use. This study employed a Delphi methodology to explore how experts in…