The purpose of this study is to equate and further validate three forms of the vocabulary size test (VST) created by Aizawa and Mochizuki (2010). These three forms, VST 1, 2, and 3, were administered to a cohort of 189 high school students ranging in age from 16 to 18 in April of their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year of high school. Although these…

Ishimoto, Davenport, and Wittmann have previously reported analyses of data from student responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE), in which they used item response curves (IRCs) to make claims about American and Japanese students' relative likelihood to choose certain incorrect responses to some questions. We have used an…

Vocabulary's relationship to reading proficiency is frequently cited as a justification for the assessment of L2 written receptive vocabulary knowledge. However, to date, there has been relatively little research regarding which modalities of vocabulary knowledge have the strongest correlations to reading proficiency, and observed differences have…

This study compared three common vocabulary test formats, the Yes/No test, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), and the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), as measures of vocabulary difficulty. Vocabulary difficulty was defined as the item difficulty estimated through Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis. Three tests were given to 165 Japanese students,…

Educational assessments occasionally require uniform test forms for which each test form comprises a different set of items, but the forms meet equivalent test specifications (i.e., qualities indicated by test information functions based on item response theory). We propose two maximum clique algorithms (MCA) for uniform test form assembly. The…

This study examined the empirical differences between the tendency to omit items and reading ability by applying tree-based item response (IRTree) models to the Japanese data of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) held in 2009. For this purpose, existing IRTree models were expanded to contain predictors and to handle…

Stewart questioned Beglar's use of Rasch analysis of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) and advocated the use of 3-parameter logistic item response theory (3PLIRT) on the basis that it models a non-zero lower asymptote for items, often called a "guessing" parameter. In support of this theory, Stewart presented fit statistics derived from…

The rise in the affordability of quality video production equipment has resulted in increased interest in video-mediated tests of foreign language listening comprehension. Although research on such tests has continued fairly steadily since the early 1980s, studies have relied on analyses of raw scores, despite the growing prevalence of item…

How to compute and report subscores for a test that was originally designed for reporting scores on a unidimensional scale has been a topic of interest in recent years. In the research reported here, we describe an application of multidimensional item response theory to identify a subscore structure in a test designed for reporting results using a…

Research related to the multiple choice test item is reported, as it is conducted by educational technologists in Japan. Sato's number of hypothetical equivalent alternatives is introduced. The based idea behind this index is that the expected uncertainty of the m events, or alternatives, be large and the number of hypothetical, equivalent…

This study used a diagnostic testing approach to compare the mathematics achievement of eighth-grade students across a sample of 20 countries, analyzing data from the Third International Math and Science Study-Revised (TIMSS-R, 1999). Using the rule-space method, student mastery was measured on 23 specific content knowledge and processing…

This paper discusses the construction of language tests, particularly for English as a Second Language (ESL), that focus on language use in real situations. Linguistic theories that provide background for language test construction are reviewed, and application of those theories to ESL instruction in Japan is examined, with attention to the…

The first volume of the 29th annual conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education contains plenary lecture and research forum papers as listed below. Short oral communications papers, poster presentations, brief summaries of discussion groups, and working sessions are also included in the volume. The plenary…