With advances in technology, researchers and test developers are developing new item types to measure complex skills like problem solving and critical thinking. Analyzing such items is often challenging because of their complicated response patterns, and thus it is important to develop psychometric methods for practitioners and researchers to…

For a multiple-choice test under development or redesign, it is important to choose the optimal number of options per item so that the test possesses the desired psychometric properties. On the basis of available data for a multiple-choice assessment with 8 options, we evaluated the effects of changing the number of options on test properties…

Proficiency with written communication (WC) is critical for success in college and careers. As a result, institutions face a growing challenge to accurately evaluate their students' writing skills to obtain data that can support demands of accreditation, accountability, or curricular improvement. Many current standardized measures, however, lack…

In this report, systematic applications of statistical and psychometric methods are used to develop and evaluate scoring rules in terms of test reliability. Data collected from a situational judgment test are used to facilitate the comparison. For a well-developed item with appropriate keys (i.e., the correct answers), agreement among various…

Chinese higher education is experiencing rapid development and growth. With tremendous resources invested in higher education, policy makers have requested more direct evidence of student learning. However, assessment tools that can be used to measure college-level learning are scarce in China. To mitigate this situation, we translated the…

Kindergarten entry assessments (KEAs) have increasingly been incorporated into state education policies over the past 5 years, with much of this interest stemming from Race to the Top--Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) awards, Enhanced Assessment Grants, and nationwide efforts to develop common K-12 state learning standards. Drawing on…

The purpose of this report is to review ETS psychometric contributions that focus on test scores. Two major sections review contributions based on assessing test scores' measurement characteristics and other contributions about using test scores as predictors in correlational and regression relationships. An additional section reviews additional…

The "SuccessNavigator"™ assessment is an online, 30 minute self-assessment of psychosocial and study skills designed for students entering postsecondary education. In addition to providing feedback in areas such as classroom and study behaviors, commitment to educational goals, management of academic stress, and connection to social…

This report documents the development of assessments of content knowledge for teaching (CKT) as part of the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.The MET study was designed to develop a set of measures that together serve as an accurate indicator of teaching effectiveness. The study was…

Written communication is considered one of the most critical competencies for academic and career success, as evident in surveys of stakeholders from higher education and the workforce. Emphasis on writing skills suggests the need for next-generation assessments of writing proficiency to inform curricular and instructional improvement. This…

This study investigates the value of reporting the reading, listening, speaking, and writing section scores for the "TOEFL iBT"® test, focusing on 4 related aspects of the psychometric quality of the TOEFL iBT section scores: reliability of the section scores, dimensionality of the test, presence of distinct score profiles, and the…

Registered examinees for the GRE® General Test answered open-ended sentence-completion items. For half of the items, participants received immediate feedback on the correctness of their answers and up to two opportunities to revise their answers. A significant feedback-and-revision effect was found. Participants were able to correct many of their…

In the Spring 2003 issue of "Harvard Educational Review," Roy Freedle stated that the SAT® is both culturally and statistically biased, and he proposed a solution to ameliorate this bias. His claims, which garnered national attention, were based on serious errors in his analysis. We begin our analyses by assessing the psychometric…

In an effort to standardize academic application procedures, the Standardized Letter of Recommendation (SLR) was developed to capture important cognitive and noncognitive qualities of graduate school candidates. The SLR consists of seven scales ("knowledge," "analytical skills," "communication skills,"…

The Standardized Letter of Recommendation (SLR), a 28-item form, was created by ETS to supplement the qualitative rating of graduate school applicants' nonacademic qualities with a quantitative approach. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the following psychometric properties of the SLR using the Rasch rating-scale model: dimensionality,…