The study aims to examine whether differential item function is displayed in three different test forms that have item orders of random and sequential versions (easy-to-hard and hard-to-easy), based on Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT) methods and bearing item difficulty levels in mind. In the correlational research, the…

There is ample evidence that reasoning about stochastic phenomena is often subject to systematic bias even after instruction. Few studies have examined the detailed learning processes involved in learning probability. This paper examines a case study drawn from a large corpus of data collected as part of a research project that dealt with the…

Understanding students' misconceptions and how they change is an essential part of supporting students in their science learning. This paper presents results from distractor-driven multiple-choice assessments that target students' misconceptions about energy. Over 20,000 elementary, middle and high school students from across the U.S. participated…

One of the best-known methods for setting a benchmark standard on a test is that of Angoff and its modifications. When scored dichotomously, judges estimate the probability that a benchmark student has of answering each item correctly. As in most methods of standard setting, it is assumed implicitly that the unit of the latent scale of the…

Questions regarding the generalizability of results from educational experiments have been at the forefront of methods development over the past five years. This work has focused on methods for estimating the effect of an intervention in a well-defined inference population (e.g., Tipton, 2013; O'Muircheartaigh and Hedges, 2014); methods for…

When competence tests are administered, subjects frequently omit items. These missing responses pose a threat to correctly estimating the proficiency level. Newer model-based approaches aim to take nonignorable missing data processes into account by incorporating a latent missing propensity into the measurement model. Two assumptions are typically…

The study compared the aberrance detection powers of the BW person-fit indices with other group-based indices (SCI, MCI, NCI, and Wc&Bs) and item response theory based (IRT-based) indices (OUTFITz, INFITz, ECI2z, ECI4z, and lz). Four kinds of comparative conditions, including content category (CC), types of aberrance (AT), severity of…

Students with emotional and/or behavioral disabilities (E/BD), including students with emotional disturbance and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, receiving special education services perform significantly worse on academic performance measures than same age peers. Researchers have focused on reading and math performance while less is…

Research in goal theory has often relied on the general linear model, ignoring some central assumptions of the theoretical framework under investigation. The purpose of the two studies reported here was to illustrate how the Rasch model can supplement traditional statistical analyses when evaluating the effects of goal orientations on persistence.…