This study investigates consistent and inconsistent respondents to mixed-worded questionnaire scales in large-scale assessments. Mixed-worded scales contain both positively and negatively worded items and are universally applied in different survey and content areas. Due to the changing wording, these scales require a more careful reading and…

Each year, all Australian students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit nationwide large-scale tests in literacy and numeracy which have their validity frequently questioned. We compared the performance of grade 3 twins on these large-scale reading tests with their performance on three individually administered literacy tests in comprehension, word reading…

Children who have difficulty learning to read are at increased risk for academic failure, poor self-esteem, anxiety and depression, and unemployment. To help reduce these risks, it is important to identify and treat weaknesses in a child's reading as early as possible. The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable comprehensive…

Since 2008 Australia has held the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (known as NAPLAN) for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Despite the multilingual character of the Australian population, these standardized literacy and numeracy tests are built on an assumption of English as a first language competency. The capacity for…

This paper examines changes in demographic and socioeconomic inequalities in student achievement over the school career, and the extent that these inequalities are accounted for by other influences such as, region and socioeconomic background (where appropriate), school differences and prior achievement. The data analysed are from a longitudinal…

This paper examines reading achievement when the maternal/paternal language has become a de facto second language. The performance of a cohort of Greek-Australian high school students (N = 270) on a diagnostic Greek reading test was significantly below that of pupils in second to fourth grades in Greece. The mean item difficulty for…