As item response models gain increased popularity in large-scale educational and measurement testing situations, many studies have been conducted on the development and applications of unidimensional and multidimensional models. Recently, attention has been paid to IRT-based models with an overall ability dimension underlying several ability…

This report describes a small study that analysed module marks of one cohort of science undergraduates from one academic year. It explored how group summative assessment marking affected the overall marks in comparison with individual assessment. A tutor allocated students to mixed ability project groups. Individual marks for the group work…

Providers of tests of languages for academic purposes generally claim to provide evidence on the extent to which students are likely to be able to cope with the future demands of reading in specified real-life contexts. Such claims need to be supported by evidence that the texts employed in the test reflect salient features of the texts the test…

Instructors across disciplines continue to seek methods to improve students' retention of class material. One potential method for increasing retention is the use of collaborative, or group, testing. We tested the hypothesis that group testing would lead to greater retention than individual testing. Two instructors, teaching 2 sections of their…

The validation of cognitive attributes required for correct answers on binary test items or tasks has been addressed in previous research through the integration of cognitive psychology and psychometric models using parametric or nonparametric item response theory, latent class modeling, and Bayesian modeling. All previous models, each with their…

Background: Pragmatic language impairment has recently been the subject of a number of studies that attempted to illuminate classification and diagnostic issues, and identify the profile of children with pragmatic language difficulties. Although much progress has been made, the nature of pragmatic difficulties remains unclear. Aims: To contrast…

Both nationally and within the State of California, it is unlikely that those children most susceptible to lead exposure are adequately screened for blood lead levels. New and creative approaches are necessary to reach these individuals. In-home phlebotomy was employed to test blood lead levels of 128 San Diego households containing Latino…

Two IRT-based procedures to estimate test reliability for a certification exam that used both adaptive (via a MST model) and non-adaptive design were considered in this study. Both procedures rely on calibrated item parameters to estimate error variance. In terms of score variance, one procedure (Method 1) uses the empirical ability distribution…

Although pair programming has proved its usefulness in teaching and learning programming skills, it is difficult to assess the individual roles and abilities of students whilst programming in pairs. (Note that within this manuscript, the term assessment refers to evaluating individual student performance.) Assessing only the outcomes of a pair…

"Naturalization Test Redesign Project: Civics Item Selection Analysis" provides an overview of the development of content items for the U.S. history and government (civics) portion of the redesigned naturalization test. This document also reviews the process used to gather and analyze data from multiple studies to determine which civics…

The present studies were undertaken to examine the effects of manipulating delay-interval task (Study 1) and timing of feedback (Study 2) on acquisition and retention. Participants completed a 100-item cumulative final examination, which included 50 items from each laboratory examination, plus 50 entirely new items. Acquisition and retention were…

This article examines how eight advanced ESL learners attend to and utilize the nonverbal information found in a video text. Using verbal report methodology in which test-takers verbalized aloud their thought processes while taking a video listening test, the results suggested that the test-takers varied in how they attended to and utilized the…

Alternatives to a solitary testing format can involve students working in teams to arrive at the correct answer. We compared two group assessment methods, cooperative and competitive, to a solitary testing approach. In most comparisons examining the undergraduate respondents' (N = 77) performance, the two group-testing methods were equivalent.…

The goal of this research project was to investigate the use of dynamic assessment to increase equity, fairness, and accuracy in the testing of abilities and achievement. Dynamic tests have been found to reveal developing expertise in underrepresented minorities around the world that is not revealed by conventional static tests. The…

Researchers sometimes need a statistical test of the hypothesis that two values of Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient are equal. The situation may involve scores from two different measures administered to independent random samples or from the same measure administered to random samples from two different populations. Feldt derived a test…