Responding to a survey requires cognitive abilities similar to those for any other linguistic task. We argue that, when faced with a cognitively challenging task, individuals respond by simplifying the task, declining it, or performing it poorly. Using the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA 2003) data sets, we document that…

The development of educational applications has always been a challenging and complex issue, mainly because of the complications imposed by the cognitive and psychological aspects of student-computer interactions. This article presents a methodology, named We!Design, that tries to encounter the complexity of educational applications development…

In previous research, Saffran and colleagues [Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. "Journal of Memory and Language," 35, 606-621.] have shown that adults…

In the past decade, major attention has been given to the power of tests and to the pivotal roles tests play in societies in shaping the definitions of language, affecting learning and teaching, and maintaining and creating social class. Accordingly, the quality of tests is not judged merely by their psychometric traits but also in relation to…

High-stakes testing and mandated assessments, which are major outcomes of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) contain multiple embedded values that affect the lives of students, their families, teachers, and counselors. A primary embedded value within the NCLB is the privileging of quantitative science over other methods of inquiry and…

"Diagnostic classification models" (DCM) are frequently promoted by psychometricians as important modelling alternatives for analyzing response data in situations where multivariate classifications of respondents are made on the basis of multiple postulated latent skills. In this review paper, a definitional boundary of the space of DCM…

Virtually errorless high speed data processing feature has made computers popular assessment tools in education. An important concern in developing countries considering integrating computers as an educational assessment tool before making substantial investment is the effects of computer-based testing on students' test scores as compared to…

The dependability of academic achievement measures for English language learners (ELLs) is influenced by three facts: (a) Each ELL has unique strengths and weaknesses in each language mode (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) both in English and in his or her first language, (b) each test item poses a different set of linguistic demands…

Issues surrounding the statewide competency testing of at-risk students are discussed. Sanctions, such as negative evaluations of educational programs associated with such tests, used to fall most heavily on schools and staff, but tests are increasingly becoming prerequisites for promotion and graduation, with increasing impact on students.…

Dichotomous search strategies (DSSs) for computerized adaptive testing are similar to golden section search strategies (GSSSs). Each middle point of successive search regions is a testing point. After each item is administered, the subject's obtained score is compared with the expected score at successive testing points. If the subject's obtained…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is compared to the two studies of the National Educational Longitudinal Studies (NELS) Program--the National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 (resurveyed in 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1979) and the 1980 High School and Beyond study (partially resurveyed and retested in 1982). The third phase…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) currently tests seventeen-year-old students enrolled in public and private secondary schools, but it does not test "out-of-school" seventeen-year-olds who have either graduated or dropped out. Estimating that one of five seventeen-year-olds is out of school, the interpretability of…

The Council of Chief State School Officers has raised some issues pertinent to the implementation of a national project to collect statistical indicators of academic achievement and to compare them across states. The United States Department of Education shares this concern, with an emphasis on sampling schools for a school level analysis which…

This paper contains a comparison of descriptive information based on analyses of pilot and live administrations of the Alabama High School Graduation Examination (AHSGE). The test is composed of three subject tests: Reading, Mathematics, and Language. The study was intended to validate the test development procedure by comparing difficulty levels…

An overview of the development of a computerized version of the Differential Aptitude Tests (DAT) is presented. It describes the previously existing printed version of the DAT, design of the computerized adaptive edition, calibration of the test items for use in the computerized version, and two field studies that compared the Adaptive and…