The Data Quality Campaign is a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to improve the collection, availability and use of high-quality education data and to implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement. The campaign aims to provide tools and resources that will assist state development…

The quality of fit between the data and the measurement model is fundamental to any discussion of results. Fit has been the subject of inquiry since as early as the 1920s. Most early explorations concentrated on assessing global fit or subset fits on fixed length, traditional paper and pencil tests given as a single unit. The detection of aberrant…

This study presents a means of identifying economically efficient school districts in Illinois and provides an analysis of select school variables: school population; salary expenditure; level of teacher preparedness; number of years of teaching experience; and select ratios incorporating pupils, administrators, teachers, test scores, and percent…

DIMTEST is a statistical test procedure for assessing essential unidimensionality of binary test item responses. The test statistic T used for testing the null hypothesis of essential unidimensionality is a nonparametric statistic. That is, there is no particular parametric distribution assumed for the underlying ability distribution or for the…

The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS), sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, are a set of surveys each of which has gathered information at multiple points in time on the labor market experiences of five groups of men and women since the mid-1960s. Each group of at least 5,000 persons was selected to be…

Using two statistical analysis techniques (the Program Evaluation and Review Technique and the Critical Path Method), this study analyzed procedures for compiling the required yearly report of the Metropolitan Separate School Board (Catholic) of Toronto, Canada. The computer-assisted analysis organized the process of completing the report more…

This paper illustrates the transformation of a raw data matrix into a matrix of associations, and then into a factor matrix. Factor analysis attempts to distill the most important relationships among a set of variables, thereby permitting some theoretical simplification. In this heuristic data, a correlation matrix was derived to display…

The study compares three methods for establishing cut-off scores that effect a compromise between absolute cut-offs based on item difficulty and relative cut-offs based on expected passing rates. Each method coordinates these two types of information differently. The Beuk method obtains judges' estimates of an absolute cut-off and an expected…

A total of 149 students enrolled in an undergraduate nursing research methods course participated in a study comparing three strategies for using formative evaluation (test feedback throughout a course) to predict students at risk of failure at summative evaluation (the final examination). Students took 12 weekly multiple-choice quizzes, which…

This study compared five density estimation techniques applied to samples from a population of 272,244 examinees' ACT English Usage and Mathematics Usage raw scores. Unsmoothed frequencies, kernel method, negative hypergeometric, four-parameter beta compound binomial, and Cureton-Tukey methods were applied to 500 replications of random samples of…

LISREL-type structural equation modeling is a powerful statistical technique that seems appropriate for social science variables which are complex and difficult to measure. The literature on the specification, estimation, and testing of such models is voluminous. The greatest proportion of this literature, however, focuses on the technical aspects…

Four methods for determining the dimensionality of a set of test items were compared: (1) linear factor analysis; (2) residual analysis; (3) nonlinear factor analysis; and (4) Bejar's method. Five artificial test data sets (for 40 items and 1500 examinees) were generated, consistent with the three-parameter logistic model and the assumption of…

In order to examine the possible effects of violation of assumptions using parametric procedures, this study is an exploratory investigation into the use of parametric versus nonparametric procedures using a multiple case study design. The case study investigation guidelines outlined by Yin served as the methodology. The following univariate…

This paper discusses distribution theory and power computations for four common "tests of combined significance." These tests are calculated using one-sided sample probabilities or p values from independent studies (or hypothesis tests), and provide an overall significance level for the series of results. Noncentral asymptotic sampling…

The purpose of this paper is to present two new alternative methods to the current goodness of fit methodology. With the increase use of computerized adaptive test (CAT), the ability to determine the accuracy of calibrated item parameter estimates is paramount. The first method applies a normalizing transformation to the logistic residuals to make…