Over the past several years, content experts, psychometricians, and researchers have been hard at work developing, refining, and studying the digital SAT. The work is grounded in foundational best practices and advances in measurement and assessment design, with fairness for students informing all of the work done. This paper shares learnings from…

It is well-documented that students' prior knowledge, cultural background, and language proficiency play a role in how they read, interpret, and respond to writing tasks (Barkaoui, 2007; Connor & Kramer, 1995; Hinkel, 2002). Essays written by students from different language backgrounds often differ in their linguistic, stylistic, and…

Presented at the national conference for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2009. This discussed the development and implementation of the new SAT writing section.

[Slides] presented at AERA in Denver, CO in April 2010. This study examined the relationship between students' self-reported high school grade point average (HSGPA) from the SAT Questionnaire and their HSGPA provided by the colleges and universities they attend. The purpose of this research was to offer updated information on the relatedness of…

This study assessed the predictive and incremental validity of a prototype version of the forthcoming SAT® writing section that was administered to a sample of incoming students at 13 colleges and universities. For these participants, SAT scores, high school GPA, and first-year grades also were obtained. Using these data, analyses were conducted…

The purpose of this study is to provide information on actual time used by students with disabilities on the new SAT®. This study observed students with learning disabilities (LD) and/or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) as they took SAT items under strict time limits and recorded the amount of time taken for each item. The study is…

This study investigated relationships between scores on the verbal, mathematics, and writing sections of the PSAT/NMSQT and the following indicators of academic achievement in high school: years of study, participation in specific math and English language arts courses, high school grade point average, academic intensity, and participation and…

Presented at the Annual National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) in New York in March 2008. This presentation explores how different item weighting can affect the effective weights, validity coefficents and test reliability of composite scores among test takers.

In connection with the new SAT that was introduced in March 2005, research has been under way to investigate the feasibility of providing examinees with score reports that contain feedback on skills measured by the critical reading, mathematics, and writing sections of the test. The main purpose of this study was to estimate the reliability of the…