We examined Differential Item Functioning (DIF) and the size of cross-cultural performance differences in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 mathematics data before and after application of propensity score matching. The mathematics performance of Indonesian, Turkish, Australian, and Dutch students on released items was…

Simulations were conducted to examine the effect of differential item functioning (DIF) on measurement consequences such as total scores, item response theory (IRT) ability estimates, and test reliability in terms of the ratio of true-score variance to observed-score variance and the standard error of estimation for the IRT ability parameter. The…

The findings and discussions related to cultural bias in testing have in no way been unanimous. However, the considerations of this area of inquiry may possess meaningful implications for educators of any subject. In this review of literature, I describe the issues, research, and arguments surrounding cultural bias in testing and discuss…

Noncognitive assessments in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study share certain similarities and provide complementary information, yet their comparability is seldom checked and convergence not sought. We made use of student self-report data of Instrumental Motivation,…

This article describes the development of an assessment system for adolescent reading comprehension. It presents a research context--a reading intervention implemented in middle and high schools in an urban district--which became the impetus for the work. The article outlines the organizational principles of construct modeling that guided the…

This paper reviews the nature and implementation of the Australian VET FEE-HELP (VFH) policy initiative: a scheme introduced in 2008 to extend income-contingent loans to the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. We argue that the implementation of the scheme has been seriously flawed, leading to a range of…

Ageism is recognized as a significant obstacle to older people's well-being, but age discrimination against younger people has attracted less attention. We investigate levels of perceived age discrimination across early to late adulthood, using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), collected in 29 countries (N = 56,272). We test for…

The European Union has seen an increased number of asylum seekers and economic migrants over the past few years. There will be request to assess some of these individuals to see if they have an intellectual disability (ID). If this is to be done using the current internationally recognized definitions of ID, we will need to be confident that the…

Adaptive Comparative Judgement (ACJ) is an alternative to conventional marking in which the assessor (judge) merely compares two answers and chooses a winner. (Scripts are typically uploaded to the CompareAssess interface as pdf files and are presented side-by-side.) Repeated comparisons and application of the sorting algorithm leads to scripts…

Is it possible to compare the results in assessments of mathematics across countries with different curricula, traditions and age of starting school? As part of the iPIPS project, a Russian version of the iPIPS baseline assessment was developed and trial data were available from about 300 Russian children at the start and end of their first year…

Purpose: The purpose of this tutorial is to discuss the use of curriculum-based language assessment (CBLA) with students who are English language learners and students who speak nonmainstream varieties of English, such as African American English. Method: The article begins with a discussion of the discourse of mathematics and the role of the…

In generalizability theory studies in large-scale testing contexts, sometimes a facet is very sparsely crossed with the object of measurement. For example, when assessments are scored by human raters, it may not be practical to have every rater score all students. Sometimes the scoring is systematically designed such that the raters are…

Differential item functioning (DIF) for an item between two groups is present if, for the same person location on a variable, persons from different groups have different expected values for their responses. Applying only to dichotomously scored items in the popular Mantel-Haenszel (MH) method for detecting DIF in which persons are classified by…

The purpose of this study is to equate Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) mathematics subtest scores obtained from TIMSS 2011 to scores obtained from TIMSS 2007 form with different nonlinear observed score equating methods under Non-Equivalent Anchor Test (NEAT) design where common items are used to link two or more test…

There are very few Black children in programs for gifted children when both historical and contemporary research indicate that such environments contain elements very similar to those described as advantageous for Black children. Presented here is an overview of the research regarding Black children's learning styles, multiple intelligences, and…