Using multiple versions of an assessment has the potential to introduce item environment effects. These types of effects result in version dependent item characteristics (i.e., difficulty and discrimination). Methods to detect such effects and resulting implications are important for all levels of assessment where multiple forms of an assessment…

This study aimed to reveal the differences in individuals' abilities, their standard errors, and the psychometric properties of the test according to the two methods of applying the test (electronic and paper). The descriptive approach was used to achieve the study's objectives. The study sample consisted of 74 male and female students at the…

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…

This study explored the cognitive mechanism behind information integration in the test anxiety judgments in 140 engineering students. An experiment was designed to test four factors combined (test goal orientation, test cognitive functioning level, test difficulty and test mode). The experimental task required participants to read 36 scenarios,…

Measuring attitudes and opinions employing agree/disagree (A/D) questions is a common method in social research because it appears to be possible to measure different constructs with identical response scales. However, theoretical considerations suggest that A/D questions require a considerable cognitive processing. Item-specific (IS) questions,…

Evaluation on the foreign student's competence of Indonesian language is required to assess their achievement. This research aimed to identify the difficulty level of test instrument, analyze the difference of foreign students' competence for Indonesian language and to analyze the correlation of students' competence over various objective test…

Classroom practices, materials and teaching methods in language classes have changed a lot in the last decades and continue to evolve; however, the commonly used techniques to test students' foreign language skills have not changed much regardless of the recent awareness in Bloom's taxonomy. Testing units at schools rely mostly on multiple choice…

Multiple test tasks are available for assessing L2 collocation knowledge. However, few studies have investigated the characteristics of a variety of recognition and recall tasks of collocation simultaneously, and most research on L2 collocations has focused on verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations. This study investigates (1) the relative…

The overall study from which findings are presented gave stem-equivalent short answer and multiple choice tests of English structure and reading to students at Prince of Songkla University, Thailand. A comparison of scores, facility, discrimination, reliability and validity from 3-, 4- and 5-option versions of the multiple choice test found little…

This study compared three common vocabulary test formats, the Yes/No test, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS), and the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), as measures of vocabulary difficulty. Vocabulary difficulty was defined as the item difficulty estimated through Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis. Three tests were given to 165 Japanese students,…

Research shows that test method can exert a significant impact on test takers' performance and thereby contaminate test scores. We argue that common test method can exert the same effect as common stimuli and violate the conditional independence assumption of item response theory models because, in general, subsets of items which have a shared…

This article compares second language test-takers' performance on an academic listening test in an audio-only mode versus an audio-video mode. A new method of classifying video-based visuals was developed and piloted, which used L2 expert opinions to place the video on a continuum from being content-deficient (not helpful for answering…

We introduce a specific type of item for knowledge tests, confidence-weighted true-false (CTF) items, and review experiences of its application in psychology courses. A CTF item is a statement about the learning content to which students respond whether the statement is true or false, and they rate their confidence level. Previous studies using…

The rise in the affordability of quality video production equipment has resulted in increased interest in video-mediated tests of foreign language listening comprehension. Although research on such tests has continued fairly steadily since the early 1980s, studies have relied on analyses of raw scores, despite the growing prevalence of item…

This research examines whether the ordering of the difficulty of exams can influence student beliefs about their academic abilities and the impact of these beliefs on their performance. The ordering of the difficulty of test items has shown to affect performance. Study One (n = 91) examined college student differences in reaction to a difficult…