This case study explored how a teacher, Ms. Walter, and her students experienced a unit of study on market structures in an Advanced Placement (AP) Microeconomics course. We employed qualitative research methods, drawing on the work of Nuthall and Alton-Lee, to connect students' experiences of classroom instruction to their reasoning on an…

The psychometric considerations and challenges associated with including constructed response items on tests are discussed along with how these issues affect the form assembly specifications for mixed-format exams. Reliability and validity, security and fairness, pretesting, content and skills coverage, test length and timing, weights, statistical…

This application study investigates whether the multiple-choice to composite linking functions that determine Advanced Placement Program exam grades remain invariant over subgroups defined by region. Three years of test data from an AP exam are used to study invariance across regions. The study focuses on two questions: (a) How invariant are grade…

Compares performance of first-year general chemistry college students from 32 institutions with performance of Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry Candidates in 1978 to provide a concurrent validity measure of the multiple-choice section of the AP chemistry examination. Average AP candidates scored significantly higher than average college students.…

Online high schools are growing significantly in number, popularity, and function. However, little empirical data has been published about the effectiveness of these institutions. This research examined the frequency of group work and extended essay writing among online Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) students, and how these tasks may have…

This paper discusses the assumptions required by the item response theory (IRT) true-score equating method (with Stocking & Lord, 1983; scaling approach), which is commonly used in the nonequivalent groups with an anchor data-collection design. More precisely, this paper investigates the assumptions made at each step by the IRT approach to…

The dimensional structure of the 1987 Advanced Placement (AP) French language examination was tested in four populations using a series of confirmatory linear factor analysis models. To mitigate problems with the linear factor analysis of multiple choice items, the linear factor analysis of item parcel scores, made of small mutually exclusive…