Students often gauge their performance before and after an exam, usually in the form of rough grade estimates or general feelings. Are these estimates accurate? Should they form the basis for decisions about study time, test-taking strategies, revisions, subject mastery, or even general competence? In two studies, undergraduates took a real…

If children fail to understand test instructions, measurements of their competence may be unfair and invalid. This is especially relevant for students with special educational needs (SEN) because they face greater challenges in comprehending instructions. Two interventions were designed to facilitate the comprehension of test requirements by…

Evidence to support the credibility of standard setting procedures is a critical part of the validity argument for decisions made based on tests that are used for classification. One area in which there has been limited empirical study is the impact of standard setting judge selection on the resulting cut score. One important issue related to…

Schools are scrambling to prepare their students for the writing assessments in correlation with the Common Core tests. In some states, writing has not been assessed for more than a decade. Yet, with the use of computerized grading of the students' writing, many teachers are wondering how to best prepare students for the writing assessments,…

The study aimed at identifying the extent of distinguished students' practice of the skills of exams management and their relationships of the variables of (sex and type of school) at the secondary stage. The descriptive approach was followed to investigate practice the level of the skills of exams management of the population of the study and its…

In previous work, I allowed students in my introductory physics course to write note sheets to prepare for exams, and I analyzed the contents as a way of determining what students saw as important in my course. In the present study, I tried a new note sheet approach where I supplied some equations for their notes in advance, thinking that doing so…

If good measurement depends in part on the estimation of accurate item characteristics, it is essential that test developers become aware of discrepancies that may exist on the item parameters before and after item review. The purpose of this study was to examine the answer changing patterns of students while taking paper-and-pencil multiple…

Online higher education institutions are presented with the concern of how to obtain valid results when administering student learning outcomes (SLO) assessments remotely. Traditionally, there has been a great reliance on unproctored Internet test administration (UIT) due to increased flexibility and reduced costs; however, a number of validity…

This paper reports on an investigation into the relationship of test-takers' use of test-wiseness strategies to Chinese EFL learners' reading test performance. A test-wiseness questionnaire was administered immediately after the final achievement test to probe into how learners thought while completing the reading section of the test. It was found…

The use of computer-based assessments makes the collection of detailed data that capture examinees' progress in the tests and time spent on individual actions possible. This article presents a study using process and timing data to aid understanding of an international language assessment and the examinees. Issues regarding test-taking strategies,…

Testwiseness--that is, the ability to find subtle cues towards the solution by the simultaneous comparison of the available answer options--threatens the validity of multiple-choice (MC) tests. Discrete-option multiple-choice (DOMC) has recently been proposed as a computerized alternative testing format for MC tests, and presumably allows for a…

Summative evaluation for large classes of first- and second-year undergraduate courses often involves the use of multiple choice question (MCQ) exams in order to provide timely feedback. Several versions of those exams are often prepared via computer-based question scrambling in an effort to deter cheating. An important parameter to consider when…

High school students with high-incidence disabilities and struggling writers face considerable challenges when taking high-stakes writing assessments designed to examine their suitability for entrance to college. I examined the effectiveness of a writing intervention for improving these students' performance on a popular college entrance exam, the…

"Data-driven school reform" emphasizes the idea that if teachers analyze the kinds of questions students miss on standardized reading comprehension tests, and then give students lots of practice with such items, they will end up with higher test scores. This approach is likely to be popular with the new Partnership for Assessment of…

This article reports on two presentations from the TCCRISLS 2014 which address a newly emerging area of inquiry--the interface between (LOA) and large-scale summative assessments. The surveyed papers propose that LOA should be introduced into summative testing to help test-takers to demonstrate their best performance. This article also makes links…