Written answers to open-ended questions can have a higher long-term effect on learning than multiple-choice questions. However, it is critical that teachers immediately review the answers, and ask to redo those that are incoherent. This can be a difficult task and can be time-consuming for teachers. A possible solution is to automate the detection…

Test-taking strategies are discussed in the literature as an important factor affecting test scores and are recommended to be taken into consideration regarding the validity of tests. Although studies have been conducted for more than a quarter century, no agreement has been reached on the dimensions of test-taking strategies. The purpose of this…

Background: In testing contexts that are predominately concerned with power, rapid guessing (RG) has the potential to undermine the validity of inferences made from educational assessments, as such responses are unreflective of the knowledge, skills, and abilities assessed. Given this concern, practitioners/researchers have utilized a multitude of…

Preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) prepare for various standardized assessments, such as the Praxis® licensure assessment. However, there is little research on test-taking behavior and test-taking strategies for this examinee population. A common belief and instruction given in some test preparation materials is that examinees should stick to…

Cognitive psychologists have found that taking practice tests improves students' learning, and some claim that tests that require recall are more effective than those that require recognition. This study examined whether recognition (i.e., multiple-choice) quizzes were as effective as cued-recall (i.e., fill-in-the-blank) quizzes for improving…

Studies have shown that test-takers tend to use keyword-matching strategies when taking listening tests. Keyword-matching involves matching content words in the written modality (test items) against those heard in the audio text. However, no research has investigated the effect of such keywords in listening tests, or the impact of gazing upon…

Disengaged responding poses a severe threat to the validity of educational large-scale assessments, because item responses from unmotivated test-takers do not reflect their actual ability. Existing identification approaches rely primarily on item response times, which bears the risk of misclassifying fast engaged or slow disengaged responses.…

Assessment of learners in the anatomical sciences is a complex task as it not only tests students' fact knowledge, but also the analysis of visual information. Sometimes, novice histology learners must acquire image recognition skills of microscopic structures in a short time frame. This paper describes a strategy of offering first year dental…

During the COVID pandemic, universities around the globe had to move not only their content delivery online, but also their assessments. Due to COVID causing significant upheaval in Higher Education (HE), this enforced experiment also afforded an opportunity to reflect on traditional, invigilated, closed book exams (ICBE) resulting in research and…

Four decades of research have shown that students' low test-taking effort is a serious threat to the validity of score-based inferences from low-stakes, group-based educational assessments. This meta-analysis sought to identify effective interventions for improving students' test-taking effort in such contexts. Included studies: (1) used a…

Different variants of the selected-response (SR) item type have been developed for various reasons (i.e., simulating realistic situations, examining critical-thinking and/or problem-solving skills). Generally, the variants of SR item format are more complex than the traditional multiple-choice (MC) items, which may be more challenging to test…

Many educational summative and formative assessments have been transferred to a remote online setting because of the pandemic. Educational professionals and stakeholders have shown interest in learning how this change in the test mode influenced test takers; that is, whether test-taking experiences in a remote test setting were different from…

As testing programs transition from paper to online testing, they must study mode comparability to support the exchangeability of scores from different testing modes. To that end, a series of three mode comparability studies was conducted during the 2019-2020 academic year with examinees randomly assigned to take the ACT college admissions exam on…

Several past studies of EFL learners' reading strategies have focused either on the strategies they used for learning to read or on those they used for taking tests. However, studies that distinguish the reading strategies used by EFL learners for learning-to-read purposes from those used for test-taking purposes in the target language, and that…

This study was conducted to determine whether the mock board examination performance can predict a candidate's performance in the Licensure Examination for Certified Public Accountants (LECPA). It covered the Bachelor of Science in Accountancy (BSA) graduates from a higher education institution in Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines, who…